There’s a large, ornate wood-paneled room in the third floor of the Massachusetts Statehouse that could be used to house people looking for shelter. It has a lot of desks that would need to be cleared out, but otherwise no one seems to be using it except for a few minutes a week.
Welcome to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
There’s an adage around government that goes “the executive proposes, but the legislature disposes.” Mayors, governors and presidents get the credit when things go right and face the jeers when they don’t.
I’m not suggesting any sympathy for those who spent significant time and effort to achieve these postions. But I am suggesting we should look at the second half of that adage.
Suffolk Superior Coutt Judge Debra A. Squires-Lee did just that when she rejected a challenge to a plan by Governor Maura Healey to cap the state’s emergency shelter network, a system running out of both money and space to house families under Massachusetts’ right-to-shelter law.
“No one seriously disputes that families living without safe shelter are at risk and, in particular, that children without access to stable housing may be irreparably harmed. But the burden [the administration] faces is simply that it no longer has either the money or the space to provide such housing immediately for every family that is eligible for the same.”
And that’s where the Massachusetts Legislature, and particularly the House, where all money-related bills must originate, comes into play.
Healey declared a state of emergency in August, asking the federal government to expedite the processing of work authorizations for the influx of migrants seeking shelter.
She followed that up in mid-September with a request for the Legislature to appropriate an additional $250 million, warning the state would run out of both space and money. The presumption was the funding could be a part of a “close-out” supplemental budget for fiscal 2023, something that typically needs to be done by October 31.
The sound you hear from that expansive chamber is crickets. House Speaker Ron Mariano said at the time:
“We’re looking to get hard numbers, and it’s very difficult for them to give us hard numbers.”
Fast forward (or is that slow forward?) a month:
“We’re trying to get them all organized and we have no idea how many we’re going to get, when they’re coming, and what they need to survive here.”
And again last week, emulating Patriots quarterback Mac Jones dropping back to pass:
“Any temporary policy changes would be better addressed by the Administration through the issuance of an executive order formally declaring a state of emergency, as they have real-time information regarding capacity issues and staffing shortages, and are in constant communication with local officials during this rapidly developing situation.”
No one disputes the issue is complex and the future is hard to predict. And certainly no one is absolving the Biden administration for its own slow motion efforts.
And of course there’s Congress, which under new Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson seems more interested in getting the IRS to back off audits on billionaires than doing anything of substance, particularly when it involves a conservative red meat topic like immigration.
Healey has attempted to set priorities on who gets the limited room at the inn, which includes Massachusetts families with children and pregnant mothers. But with the clocks changing this weekend, something many consider the unofficial start of winter when the sun sets at 4:30 in the afternoon, the prospects are, um, chilling.
Just as Boston Mayor Michelle Wu works to clear out homeless encampments at the Mass. and Cass we’re faced with the prospect of more people sleeping on the streets or, if they’re lucky, in their cars.
In rejecting the request from Lawyers for Civil Rights to stop the Healey plan, Squires-Lee was direct:
“The evidence before me ... is clear — more than a month ago, the Governor specifically requested additional appropriations for the emergency assistance program and the Legislature has failed to act.”