The state’s health and human services agency greenlighted at least four no-bid contracts and an agreement to rent shelter space at a Quincy college for more than $237,000 a month as the Healey administration attempted to respond to an influx of migrants over the past year, according to documents obtained by the Herald.
Contracts between the Executive Office of Health and Human Services and organizations serving the emergency shelter system offer deeper insight into the cost of temporarily housing thousands of homeless families, both local Massachusetts residents and migrants.
The documents also provide a more complete picture of which organizations benefited at the outset of the shelter crisis, with some securing multi-million dollar deals without going through typical procurement processes. The details come as the state projects it will spend $932 million this fiscal year and $915 million in the next on shelter-related services.
The lease agreement involves Eastern Nazarene College, which the state turned to last summer as the number of migrants arriving here quickly started to overwhelm an emergency shelter system originally set up to house only several thousand families with children and pregnant women.
The private Christian college applied through a rolling invitation for proposals to serve as an intake center for families entering the shelter system and to house up to 58 families, according to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Doing so aligned with the institution’s value of helping “marginalized people who are in challenging situations,” Eastern Nazarene College President Colleen Derr told the Herald in an interview.
The state agreed to lease nearly 56,000 square feet from the college for “emergency shelter space, office space, classroom, and cafeteria space” for $237,394 a month, according to a contract signed July 20, 2023, by the state and Eastern Nazarene College.
Officials at Eastern Nazarene College learned of the need for shelter locations in May 2023 when the state sent out a “widespread invitation for proposals” and eventually inked a contract after it became “apparent that there was tremendous urgency,” according to a timeline on the college’s website.
The contract is set to expire in July and officials on both sides are locked in conversations about extending the agreement to June 30, 2025, though the price is not up for renegotiation, Derr said.
“It has gone well this year after the initial settling in,” Derr said. “There haven’t been any significant incidents related to the interaction with campus or the larger community. And so, right now, it’s an active conversation. It hasn’t been finalized. I don’t have a sense that it won’t be but I can’t speak with certainty.”
The Eastern Nazarene College agreement is one of five provided to the Herald through a public records request that sought all contracts awarded on a no-bid basis since Jan. 1, 2023 to emergency assistance shelter providers or related organizations by the state’s health and human services agency.
A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services said the lease agreement with the college is not a no-bid contract even though it was included in the records request with four other “emergency” agreements. The agency is working to replace those no-bid contracts through the typical procurement process, the spokesperson said.
No-bid contracts were used to quickly stand-up “critical services” like food, healthcare, legal services, and job training for newly-arrived migrants in the face of “federal inaction,” the spokesperson said.
“We have turned to providers that have a proven track record of delivering services at the scale and pace that this emergency necessitates. The Executive Office of Health and Human Services negotiated contract payments based on competitive rates in similar services and models to ensure that this care could be provided for families,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The contracts add to four other no-bid agreements the state’s housing agency signed over the past year to provide food, transportation, and case management for families in the shelter system. They have since expired and some were replaced through the normal procurement process.
As shelters started to burst at the brim, the Healey administration began prioritizing families for shelter placement and in-part turned to Eliot Community Human Services to help assess families eligibility based on their clinical and “safety risk needs.”
The Executive Office of Health and Human Services agreed to a no-bid contract that set a $6.6 million fiscal year 2024 budget for the organization to run a clinical assessment site at an undisclosed location in Revere.
An employee listed on the contract for Eliot Community Human Services did not reply to a Herald inquiry.
The Healey administration also set up intake centers, including the one at Eastern Nazarene College, to facilitate an “efficient connection to temporary and longer-term shelter as appropriate,” officials said in a July 2023 statement.
Bay State Community Services landed a no-bid contract to run one of the sites, and while the Healey administration previously said the organization would operate out of the Quincy college, the state redacted the location in the copy of the contract provided to the Herald.
State officials originally agreed to pay the organization $75,000 a month for the intake center but later signed off on an increase in late September 2023 to $125,000 a month, according to the contract.
The Healey administration also expanded the type of services Bay State Community Services offered at the site, launching a “lawyer for the day pilot program” in January where migrants could receive help completing work applications from lawyers.
The one-month pilot program described in the contract cost the state $10,000 a monthly and $300 per completed work authorization for a single person, $450 per completed work authorization for a family, and $410 per filing fee, which could be waived, according to the contract.
That program has stayed in place and is now part of the bidding process for new intake centers, according to the state’s health and human services agency.
Healey has long argued that the approval of federal work permits and the ability to earn an income are key to moving migrant families out of shelter quickly. She most recently made that case in a letter sent last week to the Department of Homeland Security.
Bay State Community Services Director of Communications and Development Lisa Scanlon referred questions about the contract to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, but said the organization meets with families “to complete an assessment of need and immediately begin to work on addressing these needs.”
“We are responsible for connecting families to critical resources. Together with the assistance of (Department of Transitional Assistance) and our many local community-based networks, we work collaboratively to meet each family’s needs. These needs include the processing of working papers, medical screenings, vaccinations, and more,” Scanlon said in a statement to the Herald.
The Brazilian Worker Center, an Allston-based organization, secured a no-bid contract to run another intake where the state also initially agreed to pay $75,000 a month but later greenlighted $125,000 a month, according to documents reviewed by the Herald.
Like the contract with Bay State Community Services, the location of the intake center run by the Brazilian Worker Center is redacted in the contract but the Healey administration previously announced in June 2023 that a site opened at their Allston offices.
Brazilian Worker Center Executive Director Lenita Reason did not respond to a request for comment.
The Executive Office of Health and Human Services also inked a no-bid contract with Australian-based AMI Expeditionary Healthcare in October 2023 to run multiple temporary emergency shelters in Massachusetts, though their locations are redacted.
State officials agreed to pay up to $1.7 million a month for “full service” temporary emergency shelters and not more than $196,000 a month for “limited” locations, according to the contract.
The state contracted with AMI Expeditionary Healthcare after exploring several other provider options who could rapidly stand up shelter operations, according to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
After reviewing AMI Expeditionary Healthcare’s work in other states, the state decided to contract with the organization based on their experience operating shelters for newly-arrived migrants, according to the Healey administration.
Officials at the company did not respond to a request for comment.
