A group of less than 15 protestors rallied outside the State House Wednesday in opposition to state spending on emergency shelters in Massachusetts that are housing both local residents and migrants from other countries.
The small contingent held large signs in front on the steps of the State House reading “close the Healey hotels” and “lawmakers woke, taxpayers broke.” State officials have projected spending on emergency shelters could reach $932 million this fiscal year and $915 million in the next.
“Maura Healey, shame on you,” said Lou Murray, chair of Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities and a past contributor to the Herald. “ And I think if we have one message today, it’s end the right to shelter and close the Healey hotels. The lawmakers are woke and the taxpayers are broke. And we’re tired of it.”
Massachusetts’ decades-old right-to-shelter law requires the state to provide temporary shelter to families with children and pregnant women through the emergency assistance program. Over the past year, an influx of migrants fleeing oftentimes dangerous conditions in their home countries have arrived in Massachusetts.
The migrant families with children and pregnant women who are granted access to the emergency assistance shelter program are lawfully in the United States and have been recognized by the federal government, most times as humanitarian parolees or asylum seekers.
Noncitizens seeking shelter are required to have been “lawfully admitted for permanent residence or otherwise permanently residing under color of law in the U.S.” to access taxpayer-funded shelters, according to state regulations.
About half of the people in the state-run emergency shelter program are migrants from other countries and the rest are Massachusetts residents, according to the Healey administration.
Henry Barbaro, the executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform, said “tax dollars are a precious resource.”
“What is happening in Massachusetts is (an) entirely unsustainable expenditure of tax dollars. I think that there are plenty of poor and needy Americans that should come first,” he said.
