Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) said Friday the remaining hotel shelters where migrants were housed are now closed and she has terminated her emergency declaration from August 2023.
Healey said that when she took over from Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, families were moving into shelters across the state and remaining there for months and years at a time, Fox News reported on Tuesday.
She claimed there was no plan to reform the system, and the Fox article noted state officials used “hotels, community centers, and even a defunct prison” to house the groups of migrants pouring into the state.
In her announcement, Healey said her reforms and the shutdown of shelters are “saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and putting families on a path to self-sustainability.”
The Fox article said a recent report “showed Bay Staters will spend as much as $1 billion cumulatively on the state’s emergency shelter program in FY-2025, with migrant families making up a significant share of those receiving assistance.”
It is interesting to note the number of welfare cards in Massachusetts skyrocketed by 35 percent from June 2023 to May 2024, per Breitbart News.
The outlet said, “The massive increase in Electronic Benefit Cards (EBT) reveals the huge inflow of poor migrants — and helps to explain the rising outflow of middle-class Bay State residents who migrate to cities with cheaper housing, lower taxes, and higher wages.”
The recent Fox article continued:
In 1983, then-Gov. Michael Dukakis signed what remains the nation’s only statewide right-to-shelter law, which set in motion the conditions for such a migrant housing crisis.
Healey and the Democratic-majority legislature in Boston revised Dukakis’ law to a six-month limit on that right, and to require proof of residency as well as proper immigration paperwork with some exceptions.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Republican Mike Kennealy, who is running for Massachusetts governor, said he warned the incoming Healey about a possible migrant crisis sweeping the state.
“I warned her in writing. I warned her at an in person meeting. She didn’t listen,” he said:
Kennealy has also claimed that even though the shelters are closed, the migrant crisis is continuing “through the HomeBASE program and runaway spending.”
“The state of Massachusetts resettled thousands of migrant families into apartments at the expense of $30,000 per family to the taxpayers, but now many of the migrants cannot afford to pay their rent,” Breitbart News reported Sunday.
In May, Massachusetts State Auditor Diana DiZoglio alleged in a report that Healey relied on “unlawful” no-bid contracts to fund her massive program of housing for migrants.
