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‘They want your homes’: Elon Musk takes aim at Healey administration over months-old Mass. migrant crisis headline

In August, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll asked for residents to consider opening their homes to migrant families as the state's shelter system grappled with a surge in unsheltered families.

January 11, 2024

1 minute to read

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO who has increasingly been criticized as a right-wing conspiracy theorist , drew the attention of his almost 170 million X followers to Massachusetts’s migrant crisis on Tuesday after reacting to a local news station’s headline.

Libs of TikTok, a popular far-right account, shared a screenshot of a Boston 25 article from August under a Musk thread about migrants in New York. The video showed migrants being transported to a Brooklyn school for shelter in preparation for Tuesday night’s storm.

Musk reacted, saying, “This is what happens when you run out of hotel rooms. Soon, cities will run out of schools to vacate. Then they will come for your homes.” The tweet garnered more than 52 million views.

This is what happens when you run out of hotel rooms. Soon, cities will run out of schools to vacate. Then they will come for your homes. https://t.co/MQ159OlOXc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 9, 2024

Musk retweeted the headline later that night, saying “They’ve run out of hotel rooms, are kicking kids out of school for illegal housing and now they want your homes too.”

They’ve run out of hotel rooms, are kicking kids out of school for illegal housing and now they want your homes too https://t.co/Cro82sGjq9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2024

Mass. asked residents to ‘consider’ housing a migrant family in need

Back in August, Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency as state resources were overwhelmed by an influx of unsheltered migrants into the Commonwealth. Within the year, there was an 80% increase in the number of families living in state-funded shelter through Massachusetts’ emergency family shelter system, which houses eligible migrant families and unsheltered families who were already living in the state.

At the time, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll asked for residents to consider opening their homes to migrant families.

“If you have an extra room or suite in your home, please consider hosting a family,” Driscoll said at a press conference. “Safe housing and shelter is our most pressing need. Become a sponsor family.”

Massachusetts officials also called on the federal government for aid during the press conference. Since then, lawmakers passed a spending bill allocating $250 million to help provide shelter for vulnerable families.

A new report in December said the cost of emergency housing over the next two years could be $2 billion.