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By Chris Van Buskirk
Boston Herald
(Boston Herald) A twice-failed push to limit who can access state-funded emergency shelters based on the amount of time they have been in Massachusetts will rise from the ashes again later this week when the House takes up its fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. online news
The Republican-backed effort to require prospective shelter residents to have lived in the state before accessing services is among the 1,500 amendments lawmakers have filed to the branch’s spending plan. It will likely face stiff resistance from Democrats who have already shot down the idea.
The proposal from Rep. Paul Frost, an Auburn Republican, would put in place a three-month residency requirement for state-funded shelters, which is lower than the year-long and six-month prerequisites he tried to get Democrats to agree to in previous spending bills.
A residency requirement, Frost said, could disincentivize migrants from traveling to Massachusetts, which is facing record-level demand on emergency shelters and an expected $932 million tab for services this fiscal year and $915 million in the next.
“I think we have to do something because I don’t think that the other side, the Democrats, are offering anything that’s realistic to stop it, short of something happening at the federal level to deal with this, which obviously, I can’t control, the governor can’t control, the Legislature can’t control,” he told the Boston Herald on Friday.
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Frost’s third attempt is likely to meet the same fate as the last two after Rep. Alice Peisch, a top House Democrat, argued last month that the proposal could have faced a “significant amount of litigation.”
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“There’s a serious question of the constitutionality of whether we can do this,” Peisch said during debate on the floor of the House. “Those who are arriving have the potential to end up on the streets, which none of us want.”
During a debate in November, when the policy change was first pitched, Peisch said a residency requirement will likely not reduce the number of people seeking shelter.
“But it will drive those that this amendment makes ineligible to seek shelter at emergency rooms, airports and other facilities that are ill-equipped to handle them,” she said.
Frost said if someone wants to challenge a residency requirement in court, then let them. He pointed to the cap on the number of families in state-run shelters that Gov. Maura Healey unilaterally implemented last year, a move that was successfully defended in court.
“I think myself and other Republicans are trying to offer some actual solutions and if we got to go to court, we’ll go to court,” he said, acknowledging that the amendment will need to pass in order to end before a judge.
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