Gov. Maura Healey banned migrant families from sleeping at Logan Airport starting July 9, a move that will force the oftentimes large crowd that has used the airport as a shelter to find new places to sleep, she announced in a statement Friday.
Healey said the decision to bar people from sleeping on the floor of the airport comes as an overflow shelter at a former prison in Norfolk opened this week and administration officials traveled to the southern border to warn people of a shelter shortage here.
Scott Rice, a National Guard veteran overseeing the state’s emergency shelter system, said prohibiting families from sleeping at the airport is in the “best interest” of the families, travelers, and staff.
“The airport is not an appropriate place for people to seek shelter,” he said in a statement. “The administration has worked diligently in recent months to increase the number of families leaving shelter into more stable housing. With this progress, the recent opening of a new safety-net site in Norfolk and the new nine-month length of stay policy, we are now in a position to end the practice of families staying overnight in the airport.”
Migrants have been sleeping at the airport for months, a situation that has caused concern among officials who oversee and run the airport. The Massachusetts Port Authority Board issued a statement in October urging the federal government to offer Massachusetts help.
Families sleeping at the airport will be offered transportation to the overflow shelter sites, including the former prison in Norfolk that opened this week and can house up to 140 families, the Healey administration said.
“Staff on-site at Logan will work with families to inform them of this new policy and their options, including helping them secure transportation to another location where they have family or another option for a safe place to stay,” the Healey administration said.
A spokesperson for Massport declined to comment on the decision.
A rapid increase in the number of migrants arriving in Massachusetts over the past year quickly overwhelmed state-funded shelters here and prompted officials to expand the network through hotels and motels.
But as migrants continued to arrive and Healey implemented a 7,500-family limit on the shelter system, some new arrivals found themselves with nowhere to stay but the floor of Logan Airport. Overflow shelters have opened across the state but those too have quickly filled up.
Healey has turned to an ever-increasing set of strict measures to curtail demand on the shelter system, including a nine-month limit on families’ stay in shelters and a requirement that families reapply for overflow shelter every month.
There were 7,463 families in the emergency shelter system as of Thursday, according to state data.
