Mass. Gov. Maura Healey ends hotel shelter program, state emergency
The final hotel shelters in Massachusetts closed on Friday, bringing the state's emergency declaration to shelter migrant families to an end, Gov. Maura Healey announced.
Healey is formally ending the state of emergency first issued in August 2023. She previously announced in May that the shelter system would come to an end this summer, ahead of schedule. The final hotels were originally expected to close in December, according to a state plan released in April.
Three families were using the hotel shelter system, according to a state dashboard as of Thursday . The number of families in the traditional shelter setting totaled 3,051, with 77 families in rapid shelters.
"When we took office, families were being placed in hotels all across the state, and families were staying in shelters for months — sometimes years — at a time," Healey said in a statement. "There was no plan in place to reform the shelter system to handle the surge in demand, protect taxpayer dollars or help families leave shelter. We can all agree that a hotel is no place to raise a family. So we took action."
Since the beginning of 2025, 4,500 families have exited the shelter system, while 1,500 have entered it, Healey's office said. Between 85% and 90% of the families seeking shelter are longtime Massachusetts families.
In 2023, the state faced a surge of families seeking emergency shelter, which prompted Healey to declare a state of emergency and impose a cap on the system at 7,500 families, her office said.
"If she hadn't implemented this cap, caseload was projected to have reached 13,000 families by the summer of 2024," the statement read.
Along with closing the hotels, the Norfolk Rapid Shelter located at the former Bay State Correctional Center and the Chelsea Rapid Shelter site have also closed.
More News
Read the original article on MassLive .
