Senate Passes Supplemental Funding for Emergency Shelters

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Senate passed legislation to allocate $425 million to support emergency housing assistance for unhoused families across the Commonwealth. The bill adds cost controls and reporting mechanisms to ensure the state responsibly uses taxpayer dollars, while continuing to fund a system that serves Massachusetts mothers, fathers, and children in crisis.

The bill aims to provide safe shelter and supportive services for unhoused families, establish eligibility requirements and time-limited benefits, and ensure program accountability to help protect Massachusetts residents.

“Today we struck a balance between our fiscal responsibility to Massachusetts taxpayers and our moral obligation to moms, dads, and kids who are in a difficult moment,” Senate President Karen Spilka said. “We prioritize Massachusetts families in need, ensure transparency in the program, and lay the groundwork for long-term solutions to homelessness.”

Sen. Adam Gomez added that “our Commonwealth’s Emergency Assistance (EA) shelter system is designed to provide families facing homelessness across the state a feasible pathway to regain stable housing. This piece of legislation bolsters our critical EA shelter system infrastructure while also maintaining our responsibility to taxpayers. I’m proud to collaborate with my colleagues in the Senate to deliver sound policy for some of our most vulnerable residents.”

The legislation enhances the existing residency requirements for families in the shelter system, ensuring assistance is received by those who are Massachusetts residents. Those in shelter would be able to stay for up to six months, and those families with young children, a pregnant person late in their pregnancy, or in other vulnerable circumstances would be able to receive hardship exemptions to increase their length of stay.

The bill requires verification of personal details to confirm that shelter residents are eligible for benefits. It ensures fiscal responsibility by including new guidelines for implementation of  the shelter system intended to control costs and increase safety, and it funds temporary respite sites for families in crisis for up to 30 days and requires adult applicants for emergency housing assistance to disclose prior criminal convictions before placement into housing. The bill would also limit or exclude individuals with serious crimes from receiving assistance.

A previous version of this bill having passed the House of Representatives, the two branches will now reconcile the differences between the bills before sending it to the governor’s desk.