Local News

Quincy leaders ask state to exclude migrants from shelter system

They want the state to limit eligibility for emergency housing to families who are citizens or lawful permanent residents.

Beatrice Destine, 42 (left), lays down next to her 5 children at the Wollaston T stop as people sleep outside it in Quincy, Massachusetts on Monday night, August 26, 2024. The family are Haitian migrants. (Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe)

By Molly Farrar

September 10, 2024

2 minutes to read

Leaders in Quincy think the state should address the severe overburdening of the state’s emergency shelter system by barring migrant families from staying in the shelters.

The Quincy City Council approved a resolution by a 6-3 vote Monday night to ask state leaders to amend Massachusetts’ 1983 right-to-shelter law, which guarantees shelters to certain homeless families regardless of citizenship status.

The resolution asks the Massachusetts General Court to limit eligibility for emergency housing to families who are citizens or lawful permanent residents and have lived in Massachusetts for at least the previous six months.

Healey began capping the number of families in the overburdened system at 7,500 last year, a then-unprecedented limit on the “right-to-shelter” law. Lawmakers approved a nine-month stay maximum, which was half the length of a typical stay at the time, in March. In July, Healey announced the state would implement five-day stay limits at overflow sites.

Quincy City Council President Ian Cain, who recently failed to win the Republican nomination for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s seat, introduced the resolution and called the overburdened system “a state crisis.”

“What you’ve seen is that because there has been an influx of people with no place to go, they were sleeping at Logan,” Cain said at the meeting Monday. “Now, at MBTA stations.”

In Quincy, a city just south of Boston with four MBTA Red Line stops, families of migrants struggling to find shelter have been reportedly sleeping outside the Wollaston station. A local church initially let some families pitch tents on its property, but Quincy officials dispersed the encampment last month.

“This is not being managed with utmost care, consideration, and compassion if we are treating people who are coming to this country for a better life, and turning them into the next class of homelessness in Massachusetts,” Cain said.

Councilor Nina Liang spoke against the resolution while acknowledging that some Quincy families are not placed in shelters while non-residents are. She called Cain’s resolution a solution, but a limiting one.

“I’m grateful for the effort,” Liang said. “Our desperate want to do something is shared, and that’s why I appreciate that you stepped up and did something. Shame on me for not having a solution, and this is only going to push me to work harder to try to figure out a solution.”

The resolution will be sent to Healey and other state leaders, “emphasizing the need to address the local impact of inadequate federal immigration policy,” according to the resolution.

During the same meeting, the council voted down a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.