QUINCY, Mass. — Quincy city councilors passed a resolution Monday calling on the state to amend its decades-old right-to-shelter law amid the migrant housing crisis.
City Council President Ian Cain introduced the resolution two weeks after nearly 50 homeless migrants, including children, began sleeping outside the Wollaston MBTA station in his city.
“It’s heartbreaking, and that’s part of this,” Cain said. “This is not a compassion project when we’re letting people sleep on the streets and become homeless. We need to do something about it.”
The resolution asks that state legislators and Gov. Maura Healey limit state-supported emergency shelter to individuals and families who have been residents of Massachusetts for at least six months and are United States citizens or lawful permanent residents.
“We continue to have migrants coming into Massachusetts, which is straining both from physical and financial perspective,” Cain said.
As the state became overwhelmed by a historic influx of migrants, Gov. Healey put restrictions on the number of migrant families granted emergency shelter and just how long they could stay in that housing.
Some migrants slept at Logan Airport; others tucked their children to bed on blankets outside T stops.
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In Quincy, the state opened a migrant welcome center and temporary shelter at Eastern Nazarene College.
But Cain told Boston 25 News Quincy is feeling the financial toll of assisting its large number of migrants.
“Police are being called on a more frequent basis because of the center at Eastern Nazarene College,” Cain said. “To continue to allow people to come here when we’re turning them into the next class of homelessness does not make sense. And from a financial perspective, our community organizers are then having to take up the burden and otherwise foregoing other people they also need to be caring for.”
The resolution passed 6 to 3, with Councilor David McCarthy expressing his concern over the shelter crisis.
“It’s out of control across the country,” McCarthy said. “It’s definitely affected us, and it’s definitely put folks that are from Massachusetts, citizens of Massachusetts, veterans of Massachusetts – I could go on and on – on the back burner in a lot of cases.”
Despite no public comment opportunity for residents, one man expressed his disgust with the resolution.
“Thinking that people need to be citizens, children to have a place to stay inside is [expletive] ridiculous,” he shouted as he left Monday’s city council meeting.
Jeff Thielman, president and CEO of the International Institute of New England, helps provide various services to immigrants and protects their rights through the organization.
Thielman believes changing the law is not the correct approach. He argues that when a community invests in immigrants, it pays off in tax revenue and workers building the economy.
“Amending the law is not the solution,” Thielman said. “There is some short-term pain when newcomers come to a community because there is a cost to that community and there is a cost to the state. But over time, newcomers, new arrivals, immigrants bring value to communities and we have to kind of think long term.”
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