As the cost of housing new migrants in the state continues to mount, the Massachusetts Senate plans to vote Thursday to limit how long families can stay in state-run emergency shelters and funnel more money into the program — taking a more generous approach to how long most families can stay in facilities than the House.
The Senate’s proposal is part of a spending bill meant to buoy the strained shelter system through the end of the fiscal year, and help fund it into 2025.
According to budget officials, the Senate bill would allow the state to deploy approximately $850 million left in a state escrow account that contains the remnants of last year’s multibillion-dollar surplus, and limit the maximum stay in shelters for most families to nine consecutive months.
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It would also direct $10 million in new spending toward services such as English lessons and job training for new arrivals.
The bill draws on an idea first floated by Governor Maura Healey, who in September proposed covering the increased cost of sheltering homeless and migrant families by pulling it from the escrow account.
The proposal would allow the Healey administration to draw down $75 million from the escrow fund every month for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends in June. Starting in fiscal year 2025, the monthly allowance would go down to $65 million and drop by $10 million every three months through June 2025.
It differs in many ways from the House’s proposal, which members approved along party lines earlier this month.
The House passed a bill that would limit the maximum stay for most homeless families to nine consecutive months, starting April 1. The language includes a three-month extension for people who are employed or enrolled in a job training program. Pregnant women and people with certain disabilities would be eligible for 12 consecutive months in the shelter system, regardless of employment status.
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Under the Senate’s plan, shelter residents would be able to receive one or more 90-day extensions if they meet certain criteria, such as being a veteran, a single parent of a child with a disability, or having made progress toward receiving a permit to work. It would also require the state to create a “rehousing plan” for every family enrolled in the emergency shelter system.
Unlike the Senate, the House proposal provided no money for the shelter system beyond the current fiscal year. And while the Senate’s proposal also includes language to make pandemic-era outdoor dining permanent, which the House passed, it would not allow restaurants to continue selling alcoholic drinks to-go.
It also creates a commission to make recommendations on the sustainability and effectiveness of the emergency shelter system, and recommendations on how to best support those seeking shelter.
Eventually the House and Senate will have to hash out their differences to produce a final product they can send to Healey.
No members on the Senate Ways and Means committee Monday opposed advancing legislation to a floor vote, but four senators declined to take an up or down position.
Among them were Republican Senators Patrick O’Connor, Ryan Fattman, and Peter Durant, who has been vocal in his criticism of the state’s right to shelter law. Democrat Cindy Friedman also abstained from voting to hear the bill.
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Until recently, homeless families were guaranteed a roof over their heads under a decades-old law in Massachusetts, the only statewide so-called right-to-shelter requirement in the United States. New York City, which has a similar shelter policy, imposes more stringent limits on how long newly arrived migrants may stay in emergency shelters: There, families with children are allowed to stay in shelters for a maximum of 60 days, though there are efforts to repeal that policy.
Even with a 7,500-family cap now in place, Healey’s administration still expects it will spend nearly three times as much on the system as originally appropriated in the fiscal 2024 state budget.
The crisis has ratcheted up in recent months, costing the state millions as thousands more people arrive in the state, fleeing violence and economic turmoil in their home countries, including Haiti and Venezuela. Just months ago, in December, lawmakers passed a spending bill that infused $250 million into the state’s emergency shelter system. But the costs continue to climb.
Officials have estimated the average length of stay in the shelter system is 13 to 14 months, and without intervention, House budget chief Aaron Michlewitz said the system is “going to fall apart on its own.”
“Without making some temporary changes to this program, it’ll collapse under its own weight,” Michlewitz told lawmakers during their vote earlier this month. “The system was never designed to see this many people in it at one time.”
Andrea Park, director of community driven advocacy at Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said she felt the Senate bill is “better” and “offers more protections” than the House version, which automatically kicks some families out of shelter at nine or 12 months.
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“It certainly feels like it is more on the right track,” she said. “It gives the system a more thorough look to make sure we are doing everything we can to help set people up for success.”
Matt Stout of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross.