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Massachusetts
Shelter policy is cruel and harmful – The Boston Globe
Last week, Governor Maura Healey announced a new policy that will drastically limit children’s and families’ access to Emergency Assistance shelters and state-funded overflow shelters. Under the policy, which went into effect Aug. 1, many families with children who are experiencing homelessness will be faced with a stark choice. Eligible families can choose to stay for five days in an overflow shelter (with very limited opportunities for short-term extensions) or remain unsheltered and hope that they quickly come up to the top of the waiting list for a longer term Emergency Assistance shelter placement.
If a family stays five days in an overflow shelter, they not only will have to leave rapidly (almost by definition before they have regained stability) but they also will be deemed ineligible for Emergency Assistance shelter for at least six months. Anyone who lives in Massachusetts knows that it will be impossible for most families who have nowhere else to go to find a safe place to live within five days.
The dramatic decisions by the administration to discourage families from accessing overflow shelters and to abruptly limit the stays of families who do choose that option are particularly punitive as the only families who have been able to access overflow shelters are those who state officials have deemed eligible for Emergency Assistance shelter after a rigorous application process and who the Commonwealth has placed on the waiting list due to state-imposed capacity constraints.
Last October, Healey instituted a cap of 7,500 families in the Emergency Assistance program, the first such limit in the program’s 40-year history. In November, the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities began placing eligible families on a waiting list for longer-term shelter. Recognizing the dangers of unsheltered homelessness and the state’s obligations under the Commonwealth’s landmark 1983 right-to-shelter law, the Legislature intervened last December to require the administration to establish overflow shelters for families on the Emergency Assistance waiting list.
While the capacity of overflow shelters has never been to scale, these sites have been a lifesaving layer in the state’s response to family homelessness over the past year, keeping children and parents off the streets during the freezing cold nights of winter, through summer heat waves, and on the days in between. Indeed, there is never a good time to experience unsheltered homelessness in the Commonwealth. This can be attested to by the hundreds of children and parents who slept on the floor of Logan Airport for months until the administration worked to place those families in overflow shelters while barring additional families and individuals from accessing Logan as a place of last resort starting in July.
Before the Commonwealth terminates the first families from the overflow shelters next week, the governor should use the intervening days to reconsider and rescind this harmful policy. Healey should commit to having a dialogue with the families who will be most directly impacted and engage advocates, providers, and key legislators about alternatives that truly center the safety and dignity of children and families experiencing homelessness.
The Legislature should intercede to uphold the spirit of the state’s landmark 1983 right-to-shelter law by securing access to shelter for all eligible families, committing to providing the needed funding to keep the doors of shelters open, and making bold investments in the homelessness prevention resources, long-term housing, and supportive services that children, families, and communities need and deserve.
Families should not have to resort to sleeping in hospital emergency rooms, bus stations, train stations, airports, cars, and other places not meant for human habitation.
While state lawmakers continue to pressure federal officials to reform the nation’s immigration system and better support immigrants, refugees, and children and adults seeking asylum, the state must simultaneously stabilize rents, uplift communities, eliminate inequities, and uphold the basic human rights of shelter and housing for everyone who calls Massachusetts home.
Kelly Turley is associate director of Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.
Just as the summer travel season heats up, gas prices are finally dropping, with the national average falling below $4 a gallon.
It marks the first time since March 30 prices are that low, and follows nearly four straight weeks of declines, according to data from AAA.
Massachusetts and the northeast as a whole are still above that average, at $4.09 a gallon, but it’s down sharply just in the past week.
Prices are lower south of Boston, such as in Bristol and Plymouth counties, and some wholesale clubs are selling at $3.60 a gallon.
Mark Schieldrop, spokesperson for AAA Northeast, says the highest price paid at the pump in Massachusetts during the war was $4.50 a gallon.
Schieldrop said the decrease comes on the heels of the U.S. agreement with Iran to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz, causing crude oil prices to fall.
“We’ve seen a nice steady decline in prices that really started more than three weeks ago,” he said, “Markets anticipated this happening, and that really led to prices beginning to fall.”
Since prices can vary, he recommends drivers shop around and avoid convenient locations.
“You are going to see those higher gas prices right off that highway exit at that first gas station that you see, because they know that they’re going to catch a lot of stray travelers,” he said.
Decreasing gas prices comes as millions of Americans prepare to travel for July 4 in record numbers starting next weekend.
“When prices are on a downward trajectory, that certainly is conducive to encouraging folks to travel,” Schieldrop said. “We do expect strong travel over the July Fourth holiday. And people are still very interested in travel.”
While gas station owners are sometimes accused of price gouging, Schieldrop said most are trying to navigate a volatile market themselves, and are looking to stay competitive when prices drop and they have a surplus.
“They have to be very careful about sort of using a price buffer to ride that volatility so that way you’re able to make money, but you’re not gouging customers, and you’re being competitive in a market because the retail gasoline market is very competitive, ”he said.
Prices a year ago were $3.05 a gallon, but he said we won’t be getting anywhere near those prices this summer.
Local News
The annual lottery is for standard white Massachusetts passenger license plates.
The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles announced on Monday it is now taking applications for the 2026 Annual Low Number Plate Lottery.
The annual lottery is for standard white Massachusetts passenger license plates. Winners and alternate winners will be selected using an electronic random number generator and notified by mail no later than Sept. 15.
To be eligible, an applicant must be a current Massachusetts resident with an active, state registered and insured passenger motor vehicle. They must also have a state-issued driver’s license or ID in good standing.
You can apply through Aug. 14 at the myRMV Online Service Center.
While there’s no cost to enter, “applicants selected in the lottery will be required to pay the special plate fee in addition to the applicable standard vehicle registration fee,” the RMV said.
Commercial vehicles and motorcycles will not be accepted as applicants. MassDOT workers and contract employees and their immediate family members are ineligible to participate, the RMV said.
Massachusetts
Two men indicted for Hinsdale robbery after ‘cigarette trail’ leads through Vermont, Massachusetts
HINSDALE, N.H. (ABC22/FOX44) – Two men from Massachusetts have been indicted after they allegedly stole more than $200,000 in cigarettes and fled in a stolen U-Haul van before setting it on fire.
According to court documents, the men robbed the T-Bird Mini Mart on Brattleboro Road in Hinsdale, New Hampshire back on March 15. They then allegedly drove the U-Haul north into Brattleboro, Vermont before heading south on Interstate 91 down in Massachusetts.
Cartons of cigarettes reportedly fell from the back of the van as it drove through Brattleboro, which were estimated to be worth more than $50,000. The “trail of cigarettes” was reportedly used by investigators examining surveillance footage to track the path of the van leading up to the arrest of two suspects last week.
Richard Conner, 64, of Greenfield, Massachusetts, and James Ferguson, 66, of Worcester, Massachusetts, were arrested on Friday.
According to court documents, Ferguson was also seen on camera earlier in March stealing the U-Haul van in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The two men now face federal charges under the Hobbs Act and, if convicted, could spend up to 20 years in prison.
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