Gov. Maura Healey’s administration has already spent more than half a billion dollars this fiscal year on taxpayer-funded shelters housing migrants and local families, according to public data, though state officials contend the number of new arrivals in the system is decreasing.
In a report released last week before Healey signed another spending bill that shuttled millions to the shelter system, the governor’s top budget-writers said Massachusetts spent just over $520 million in the seven and a half months since the fiscal year started in July 2024.
Massachusetts Republican Party spokesman Logan Trupiano said the amount spent so far in fiscal year 2025 does not yet account for the $425 million in shelter cash included in the shelter bill.
“Unfortunately, this is exactly what we predicted. Without meaningful reform, Democratic leaders will continue to waste valuable resources — funds that could be used to fix decaying schools or provide direct relief to struggling municipalities,” Trupiano said in a statement.
The state has shelled out more than $1.3 billion since the start of fiscal year 2024 on emergency assistance shelters, a program initially created to house families with children and pregnant women but has since come to also care for migrants in Massachusetts, according to state data.
Among the spending so far this year, the Healey administration has shelled out more than $326 million on shelter services, another $55.9 million on a program that provides low-income families with cash assistance to move into stable housing, and more than $32 million on overflow shelter sites, records show.
State budget-writers expect to spend more than $1 billion on the emergency assistance program in fiscal year 2025 after doling out $856 million in fiscal year 2024.
There were 5,628 families enrolled in the emergency assistance program as of Feb. 27, dramatically less than last year when the system was housing 7,500, according to state data.
More than 75% of families now seeking shelter are “long-time Massachusetts” residents, according to the Healey administration.
A spokesperson for Healey’s budget-writing office said the governor has “already successfully lowered the cost” of state-run shelters, with more savings expected to arrive in the coming months as the number of families in the system continues to decrease.
“The supplemental budget that Gov. Healey just signed and the other reforms she implemented, including ending the use of hotels and reducing caseload to 4,000, will lower costs even more and make the shelter system safer for residents and communities,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Healey and state lawmakers on Beacon Hill have drastically curtailed access to the emergency assistance program, including by cutting back the maximum amount of time a family can stay in a shelter to six months and capping the system at 4,000 families starting at the end of this year.
The spending bill that Healey signed last week bars from state-run shelters people who are not lawfully living in the United States, though there are exceptions for families with a child who is lawfully in the country.
In an interview with The New York Times published over the weekend, Healey made clear that state-run shelters are “not to be a refuge for people from other states who, sadly and with compassion I say this, became homeless and then come to Massachusetts to get housing.”
“That’s not the point of the law,” she said.
In a statement last week, Healey said the spending bill included “critical improvements that I proposed to reduce the taxpayer costs of the family shelter system and make it safer for residents and our communities.”
“We all know that urgent action is needed to lower the cost of the system and make sure it is a viable, safe and temporary option for Massachusetts families who have fallen on hard times,” she said.
The spending bill also requires the administration to come up with a plan to end the use of hotels and motels as temporary shelters — sites that can often cost the state hundreds of dollars per night to house families.
More than half of the shelters in hotels and motels have already been closed, according to the administration, which plans to shutter all of them by the end of the year.
Sen. Peter Durant, a Spencer Republican, said he was surprised to learn the state has already spent $520 million in fiscal year 2025 because he thought reducing the number of hotels and motels would save more money.
“It’s higher than I expected, and I’ll tell you why, because the last briefing that we just had with the Governor’s Office had indicated that they had been aggressively shutting down shelters for most of this fiscal year,” he told the Herald.
