The situation has resulted in a cruel irony for a state that once promised all families a roof over their heads at night. As the rules prompt new arrivals to opt for the streets rather than state-run temporary shelters, the once-full facilities now have open beds.
“Unfortunately, some families are declining the opportunity to stay in our temporary respite centers,” said Karissa Hand, a spokesperson for the governor. “We encourage families to use this option so that they receive case management and other resources to help them identify their next steps.”
As of Wednesday morning, 164 beds were availablein those respite centers.Since Aug. 1, just 15 new families have been placed in those shelters.
Boston area churches and nonprofits that have been helping house some of the homeless say they can’t afford to keep going at the current rate. One church currently offering refuge to migrant families, Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in East Boston, says it now has to ask families to go elsewhere.
On Monday night, more than 40 migrants, including pregnant women and children as young as 18 months old, slept outside the Wollaston MBTA station in Quincy. A father set up a tarp over his 5-year-old twin boys and his wife, while a Red Line train rumbled overhead. A mother, almost six months pregnant, tried to rest next to her 1-year-old daughter on a thin layer of blankets spread over the concrete.
Wilfrid Joseph’s daughter Wildenaer, who is 6 years old, slept with her mother, hidden from public view behind a blue tarp.
“We are waiting for housing now,” said Joseph, 39, in Spanish. “If we sleep there [at the overflow sites] for five days, after that, what am I going to do with my daughter?”
Odrick Dorcias, 28, a Haitian migrant, prepared to stay overnight with others outside the Wollaston T stop on Aug. 26.Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe
Judy Wolberg, a volunteer with the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network, said her organization received a grant last year to provide humanitarian support to migrants, butfunds for hotel stays ran out quickly. She has been visiting the Wollaston T stop in the evenings, organizing donations of food, water, and sleeping supplies for migrant families.
“Many people want to do something that helps,” Wolberg said of the donations she distributes. “So how come the state can’t?”
Hand, the Healey spokeswoman, emphasized that temporary respite centers provide resources beyond a safe place to stay and “have helped dozens of families leave for alternative accommodations,” and that migrant families at these centers can request to stay longer under certain circumstances.
Once known as overflow shelters and now called “temporary respite centers” by the Healey administration, these state-run facilities until recently played a crucial stop-gap for families waiting to get into longer-term emergency shelters; with more than 20,000 people, the latter remain full.
The new restrictions, however, shift more of the burden onto nonprofit and religious groups.
At Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in East Boston, almost 40 migrants have been sheltering in the sanctuary for more than two weeks. Several said they had declined a short stay in overflow shelters because of concerns about what would come next. Some had spent nights sleeping outside so they would not have to wait six months to qualify for long-term shelter. The Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network and the church worked together to bring migrants to the East Boston church.
On Monday night, children sped up and down the aisles of the church with toy trucks. Parents laid out rugs, cots, and blankets, getting ready for the evening. In the kitchen,mothers and fathers cooked dishes of meat, carrots, and yucca.
Fortunise Cene, 29, held her son Jerry Reny Cene, 1, as Jerry’s father, Jean Dadrick Reny, 42, fed him at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in East Boston, on the evening of Aug. 26.Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe
Some migrants now staying at the church, such as Jean Dadrick Reny and his family, who arrived in Boston in early August, were previously sheltering at a tent encampment in the garden of the Faith Lutheran Church in Quincy. Before that, Reny, his wife, and their two children — 1-year-old Jerry and 5-year old Horena — slept at the Wollaston T station. Like others, they declined to stay at an overflow shelter because they were worried about where they would be once their time limit was up, Reny said.
“It’s a lot of movement,” Reny, 42, said in Spanish. “We feel bad. The boy got sick with the cold, with the rain.” The family is Haitian, but lived in Chile for nine years, and waited for more than a year in Mexico to enter into the US legally.
By early next week, though,Reny and other migrant families will have to leave the ad-hoc shelter because the church is running out of funds.
Organizers say it was a painful decision, but a necessary one.
The church relies on individual donations from community members, both cashand goods like food and clothes. They have not received state funding, church members said. Pastor Don Nanstad of Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, said he was speaking with other churches in the area to see if any are willing to shelter even a few families.
“It’s not a sustainable situation for anybody,” said congregation president Fred Pucillo.
The responsibility of caring for new arrivals, said Sandra Nijjar, founder and director of the East Boston Community Soup Kitchen, which partners with Our Saviour’s, “is falling on all of us.”
Despite outcry from advocates, and previous reports that a number of families were already sleeping on the streets, the Healey administration is not backing down from its shelter restrictions, citing the costs of operating the state’s emergency shelter system — which will be more than $1 billion through the next fiscal year.
Horena Reny Cene, 5, Jerry Reny Cene, 1, Fortunise Cene, 29, and Jean Dadrick Reny, 42, set up for the night at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in East Boston.Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe
Although many states are experiencing similar influxes of migrants, the situation unfolding in Massachusetts may be somewhat unique, said Dennis Culhane, an expert on homelessness and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
While there have been scattered reports of families sleeping outside in Denver, Los Angeles, and inside city buses or police stations in Chicago, Culhane said, for the most part, these cities have made room for families in city shelters or rented hotels.
”There are individuals — single adults — you hear that happening,” said Culhane. “But we have not seen reporting, to my knowledge, of families, because of these shelter policies, sleeping outdoors.”
On Monday night in Quincy, Filsaime Menos, the husband of Destine,said he would stay awake through the night to keep a close eye on his family outside the station. It was midnight, andMenos, 57, sat on a bench with a group of other fathers. “My children, they are living in a dangerous situation,” he said in French. “I won’t sleep, I’ll be looking out for the well-being of my family tonight.”
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @giuliamcdnr.
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Publish date : 2024-08-29 23:18:00
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