Some families are running out of time in Massachusetts shelters

Hundreds of migrants who were told in July and August that they would have to leave Massachusetts’ shelter system within 90 days have now reached that limit.

The move was part of new legislation mandating emergency aid The stay in the animal shelter is limited to nine months. Thousands of families had already been in the system for many months when the deadline was introduced. The state began sending notices to some of these families in July.

Since then, 838 families have received exit notices. According to the state, 680 of them were granted a 90-day extension and 217 received a second 90-day extension. It was found that 26 of them were ineligible for an extension. Another 194 families have completely left the accommodation.

“It really leaves families who have been there for over nine months in a lot of fear and uncertainty, wondering, ‘Are we going to be chosen next?'” said Andrea Park, director of community-focused advocacy at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.

Park said advocates initially assumed the law would take effect June 1, meaning families wouldn’t have to leave until nine months after that date, giving them more time to secure accommodation.

“But then, you know, EOHLC [Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities] I decided to interpret that retroactively,” she said. “Now everyone who has been in the animal shelter system for at least nine months must undergo what is known as selection.”

Park called the process confusing because it was unclear when the 90-day extensions would begin and whether the 90-day notice period would be included.

Park said the changes have created a lot of work for providers and caused “real psychological trauma for the families who just don’t know what to expect.”

Extensions are not application based. “We consider all families based on their case files,” a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said in a statement. Shelter providers grant these extensions based on their commitment to families, he said.

According to the state, all terminated families had already been in housing for at least nine months on the day they received their 90-day notice. The state will notify families of their eligibility for the second extension 45 days before the end of their first extension. This is intended to give families time to plan an exit if they are not eligible for the second extension, according to the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

“It is an extraordinarily difficult time as the system tries to move families out of shelters and into more permanent situations,” said Kate Barrand, president and CEO of Horizons for Homeless Children, who works with children in those facilities.

Barrand added that she believes the collaboration between the state and nonprofits is strong. She has seen how many families have been able to extend their stay in emergency shelters. The underlying problem is the region’s acute affordable housing crisis, she said.

“I think what you see is that we have families that are coming out of a situation of deep poverty and it’s very hard to get back on their feet,” she said. “This doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long and arduous process to secure a job that pays you a living wage and actually get a place to live that you can afford.”

Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll spoke Tuesday about the longevity of shelter stays. She chairs a commission tasked with examining the sustainability and efficiency of the emergency shelter program.

“We have seen that families who have been in a shelter for an extended period of time have a much harder time getting out because their needs are different than what the shelter can provide,” she said. “So they just stay there. They just stay there and don’t really move away.”

Driscoll said the system was not designed to accommodate such situations and the commission was exploring alternatives. “Our hope is to have a model that stays true to our values ​​of providing housing for people, but also makes it operationally and financially sustainable to ensure we meet those exact needs.”

The commission has until December 1 to submit a report to the legislature.

There are many things that help people get on their feet, including work authorization papers, job searching, English classes, skills training, financial literacy, child care, transportation, and then saving and finding housing.

“Remember that there is an entire system that must be in place to support someone in permanent housing, and that when any one of those pieces breaks down, a family’s ability to maintain housing is at risk,” Rabbi James said Greene, CEO of Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts, a group that works with migrant families to provide legal advice and find permanent homes.

He explained that things can slow down if it’s difficult to find childcare or can’t find a way to work.