‘I'm really worried.' With the state's hotel shelter system closing, families struggle to find places to live

Boston Globe

16 hours ago

'I'm really worried,' Amparo, 37, said in Spanish in an interview on Monday. The change, she says, 'is a big burden.'
She doesn't have a full-time job, so for the time being, she can't afford rent, even though a state program could subsidize some of the costs, she said.
Her children are ages 15, 10, and 9, one of whom has special needs. 'At the hotel, we knew the system, and life was a little easier,' she said.
Now, one question runs through her mind often as her family is shuffled from one place to another. 'Will we keep being able to be in a shelter or have to go to the street?'
On Monday, as the state moved another step closer to fully shuttering its hotel shelter system — which at its peak last year saw more than 128 hotels open
— a number of these facilities across Greater Boston appeared largely desolate. The number of families requesting housing in the state's shelter system has dropped dramatically from a year ago. The Emergency Assistance shelter system was sheltering about 7,500 homeless families at its height last year, but as of last week, 3,740 families were housed in the system, according to state data.
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Ed Augustus, secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, said in a statement last week that,
'Now, costs are going down, we are closing all hotels, and the number of families in EA shelter is below the level when we first took office.'
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He acknowledged the Healey administration 'inherited a surge in families and an Emergency Shelter System that was not equipped to handle it.'
In Danvers, the parking lot of a Motel 6, once bustling with residents, was nearly empty, with just a few workers moving boxes and mattresses. In Chelsea, at the former soldiers' home, which was converted to a temporary shelter more than a year ago, barely a handful of families were coming out of the building. In Peabody, a former Holiday Inn which previously housed dozens of families, including Amparo and her children, showed no signs of the families who had lived there just a few days earlier.
The closure of these hotel shelters has raised questions about where exactly families will be living — and if the available housing options provide a sustainable future for their families.
On Monday, 11 hotel shelters closed, a spokesperson for the housing office said, and in total, 24 hotel shelter programs have closed this month.
As of July 1, only four hotel shelters will remain, and all hotel shelters will be closed by July 31, according to the state. '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 spokesperson said.
Governor Maura Healey had planned to phase out the use of hotel shelters by the end of the year, but she
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Advocates and the state have been looking to relocate many of the families through
Andrea Park, an advocacy director at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said that some housing providers were 'really caught off guard' by how quickly the timing was changing.
'For providers, it's extremely difficult to try to provide a meaningful opportunity to set families up for success, under an artificial time deadline,' Park said. 'We are concerned about families who are being set up to fail.'
In Revere, rumors about shelters closing were swirling at the former Quality Inn, which appeared to still be in use as a family shelter on Monday. Some residents said they were concerned about what the other hotel closures could mean for them. 'It's scary, not knowing,' said Alandra Abreu as she pushed her 1-year-old in a stroller in the parking lot. She has been at the Quality Inn for about a week, but said she hasn't heard from the staff about what's next for the facility. 'They haven't said anything to us,' Abreu, 25, said.
Some shelter residents and public officials have reported concerns about the safety inside state shelters, where more than 1,000 serious incidents, including more than a dozen alleged sex offenses,
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Still, these facilities became a lifeline for thousands of families with children who had arrived in Massachusetts from countries across the Caribbean and Latin America — especially from Haiti —who fled violence, poverty, and extreme economic instability.
Pastor Dieufort Fleurissaint, who goes by his nickname Pastor Keke, said that the nonprofit he founded, True Alliance Center, has been working to help connect hotel shelter residents with housing through the HomeBASE program. Many of the families True Alliance works with are Haitian and formed part of the tens of thousands of recent arrivals who sought housing in the shelter system in recent years.
Though Pastor Keke said he had not received any calls on Monday from residents unable to find housing as the hotels closed, he is particularly anxious about what will happen to the immigrant families placed into HomeBASE, who may have their legal status and work permits revoked under recent Trump administration directives.
The administration recently announced that Temporary Protected Status for Haitians
WelcomeNST, a volunteer organization that helps resettle immigrants and refugees, has interviewed around 20 families living in hotel shelters for resettlement in towns across New England, said Elizabeth Davis-Edwards, the founder and CEO. Davis-Edwards has spoken to people who held full-time jobs while living in the shelters, only to lose their employment after being transferred to another facility out of commuting distance. 'There has to be a clear path to that family being able to stand on their own feet,' Davis-Edwards said.
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So far, the volunteer teams in three towns have signed up to help families leaving the hotel shelters to access housing there, but Davis-Edwards is eager to recruit more volunteers. 'It doesn't mean it's easy, but every time, a team will find housing for a family,' Davis-Edwards said.
Samantha J. Gross and Stephanie Ebbert of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at