As numbers hit a record high,
state fills shelters, far-off motel rooms
BOSTON GLOBE, By Megan
Woolhouse and David Abel, December 02, 2013
GREENFIELD — Record numbers of homeless families are overwhelming the state’s
emergency shelter system, filling motel rooms at the cost to taxpayers of tens
of millions of dollars a year.
An average of
nearly 2,100 families a night — an all-time high — were temporarily housed in
motel rooms in October, just about equaling the number of families in emergency
shelters across the state, according to be
the state Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
The demand for
shelter is so great that the state has been temporarily sending homeless
families from Boston to motels in Western Massachusetts, although state officials said many have been relocated back again, closer
to home.
Aaron Gornstein, the undersecretary for housing, said the
surge has followed cuts in state and federal housing subsidies, soaring rents
in Greater Boston, and still-high rates of unemployment and underemployment,
particularly among lower-income workers.
“The state as a
whole has recovered from the Great Recession faster than most other states, but
in many ways we’re still struggling,” Gornstein said. “Federal budget cuts have
made the situation worse.”
A recent report from the Department of Housing and Urban
Development said the number of homeless people in shelters and living on the streets
in Massachusetts has risen 14 percent since 2010 to nearly 20,000 in January
2013, even as homelessness has declined nationally.
This jump in homelessness is another example of an uneven
recovery. Even as stocks soar to new heights and real estate values rebound,
many of the state’s poorest residents remain without jobs and homes four years
after the last recession. The problems have been compounded by the dramatic
federal spending cuts, known as sequestration, which have cut housing and food
subsidies.
“There’s no question, this is a continuing legacy of the
Great Recession,” said Michael Goodman, a professor of public policy at the
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. “There’s more we can do to help, but
it’s not likely, given where federal policy is. That suggests it’s going to be
a very long winter for many.”
In the Western Massachusetts community of Greenfield,
taxicabs pull up to the Quality Inn, but instead of tourists or business
travelers with wheeled luggage, homeless families toting belongings in trash
bags emerge.
Gretchen Vazquez is one of them. She moved into a room in
the Quality Inn in October with her two daughters, 1- and 9-years-old, when the
state subsidy for her Roxbury apartment ran out after the Legislature stopped
funding a program called HomeBASE. The program was created to provide an
alternative to emergency shelters.
The cramped motel, Vazquez lamented, is far from her
evangelical church and her daughter’s school in West Roxbury. After missing
about two weeks of school, her daughter enrolled in the public school system
here.
“I’m stuck,” said Vazquez. “I don’t know what’s going to
happen next.”
Massachusetts has one of the most extensive shelter
systems in the country. Unlike most states, it offers emergency housing to
anyone who qualifies. Many end up in shelters or living in homes that board
families in rooms, known as congregate housing.
Motels are one of the state’s most expensive options at
$82 a night, almost as much as congregate housing’s $100 a night cost. In the
past five years, state spending on motels has exploded to more than $46 million
from about $1 million in 2008, according to state records
The average motel stay, state housing officials said, is
about seven months, although some families live in motels for a year waiting
for affordable housing.
Libby Hayes, executive director of Homes for Families, a
Boston advocacy group, said it is not surprising that low-income workers with
fewer skills cannot make ends meet since even college graduates are struggling
to find work.
“The economy is not working,” Hayes said. “How do we
expect people from the lowest income tier to make it if people who have had
opportunities can’t?”
The recent jump in homeless people signals that people
have run out of alternatives, said Randy Albelda, an economics professor at the
University of Massachusetts Boston. Many families were able to stay off the
streets by living off savings, doubling up with family members, or sleeping on
friends’ couches, Albelda said. But eventually their money or relatives’ good
will “just runs out.”
“Families close to the edge have not been able to pull
back from the edge in this recovery,” Albelda said. “That’s in part because the
recovery has not affected the bottom 30 to 40 percent of people.”
Rather than warehousing families in motel rooms, said Jim
Greene, director of the Emergency Shelter Commission of Boston, the state needs
more long-term rental assistance programs that target families who are homeless
or at risk of homelessness.
“That’s how you bring the numbers down, with the right
social services,” he said. “Short-term programs don’t get people out of
homelessness.”
Felicita Diaz’s family — her mother, 20-year-old sister,
and 11-year-old brother — moved to an EconoLodge in Northborough for three
weeks this fall after the housing subsidy for their Dorchester apartment ended.
Diaz, 18, a freshman at UMass Boston, said she took the
commuter rail to get to her first day of college and then stayed with friends
so she could attend classes and keep her job in the admissions office. But her
11-year-old brother missed about three weeks of school because the family could
not afford the daily $9 fare to and from Boston on the commuter rail. Her
mother had to quit her English as a Second Language classes because of the
distance.
The family has temporarily moved to an apartment in
Chelsea, continuing to hunt for affordable housing. Diaz’s brother is back in
school, but her mother will have to wait until spring to enroll again in
English classes.
“It’s been really hard,” Diaz said.
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