A majority of hotel shelters for migrants and local homeless families in Massachusetts will be closed by the end of Monday — a move state officials credit to declining caseloads, one that a watchdog called a “gimmick.”
The Healey administration is expected to shutter 28 sites at the beginning of the week, while the remaining four are slated to stay open through the end of July, officials have confirmed. That will put pressure on advocacy groups working to relocate families who are without housing, the Boston Globe first reported.
Gov. Maura Healey has spent nearly $830 million on the emergency shelter system this fiscal year. Some critics fear that the state’s plan, which they say lacks important details, will prompt costs to skyrocket even more for taxpayers.
The emergency assistance program, exceeding $1.3 billion since the start of fiscal year 2024, has caused a heavy strain on taxpayers since 2022, when then-Gov. Charlie Baker converted some hotels into shelters to accommodate the growing need amid the influx of migrants.
Fiscal year 2025 also ends on Monday.
At the peak of the crisis, nearly 130 hotels operated as shelters, serving 7,500 families and more than 23,000 people in total. The Healey administration projected the caseload to drop below 4,000 families this summer, prompting the closure of all remaining 32 shelters six months ahead of schedule.
“Providers and on-site case managers have been working closely with all impacted families to help them identify secure housing before the closing date,” the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities told the Herald on Sunday.
Some Bay Staters are calling for more concrete details on the closures and the steps ahead.
“This move does not solve the crisis,” Jon Fetherston, a former emergency shelter director, told the Herald. “It will only drive up costs for taxpayers, worsen the housing market for working families by pushing up rents, and still offers zero transparency on who is being moved into our neighborhoods.”
Healey credits the declining hotel shelter caseload to a series of reforms her administration has made to the system. A couple of updates included requiring proof of Massachusetts residency and that all family members have lawful immigration status.
“A hotel is no place to raise a family,” Healey said in a statement in May, “and they are the least cost-effective.”
The Healey administration has said that because of the reforms, roughly 85 to 90% of families seeking temporary housing are “now longtime Massachusetts families.”
As hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on emergency assistance, Healey has also dumped nearly $100 million toward HomeBase, a program that provides eligible families in the state-run shelter system with $30,000 over two years, and the possibility of a third year.
Housing Secretary Ed Augustus has said the administration will be pausing all approvals for the third year of HomeBase support starting Tuesday, allowing his office to focus on the most families relative to limited resources, the Herald reported last week.
The pause comes as the program’s total caseload increased dramatically between 2023 and 2025, surging from 1,473 families in January 2023, when Healey took office, to 9,059 families as of the end of June, according to state data. Some 5,154 are receiving rental assistance.
Paul Diego Craney, spokesman for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, said he expects HomeBase will absorb the families moving out of the hotel shelters.
“The governor is still expecting Massachusetts taxpayers to fund the bill for their housing,” he said. “It’s just a new gimmick.”
Augustus says officials also plan to implement “more consistent annual income checks” to ensure families remain eligible for HomeBase and “modernize” data collection to gain a better understanding of how people are leaving the program and target services that better help families.
Though most hotel shelters will be closing on Monday, Fetherston is still calling for the Department of Justice to conduct a federal probe into the system he describes as “dangerous and corrupt.”
Fetherston sprang into the national spotlight after blowing the whistle on the system when he highlighted incident reports alleging domestic abuse and child sexual assault inside the Marlboro shelter he managed.
Fetherston is not buying an argument from the Healey administration that it included criminal background checks on all shelter residents in its series of reforms earlier this year.
“None of the migrants have been properly vetted,” Fetherston said. “Communities across Massachusetts have been kept in the dark while Healey continues to gaslight the public, refusing to give honest answers about the scope, cost, and consequences of her policies.”
