Massachusetts does not collect citizenship data for emergency shelter recipients

Black, African American, or African recipients of Emergency Assistance shelter in Massachusetts are more than 6x over represented

The Commonwealth collects a vast and exhaustive array of demographic and programmatic data as part of the Emergency Assistance shelter program but does not collect basic citizenship data, so it is impossible to know exactly how many Massachusetts citizens are receiving the benefit as compared to newly arrived immigrants.

Governor Maura Healey is predicting the program will cost $575M in FY24 which is slightly more than the $561M recent tax cut plan. The average EA recipient cost is $65,423 per family per episode of homelessness with an average stay of 428 days.

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Unlike New York City, Massachusetts is not under a consent decree to provide housing and is the only state in the nation with a so-called Right to Shelter Law.

Black, African American, or African recipients of Emergency Assistance shelter in Massachusetts are over represented by 633% compared to the state population as a whole and account for 43% of all newly entered applicants (6.8% of statewide population in 2020) to the growing state program according to the most recently available quarterly report.

Hispanic/Latino recipients are 36% of all new entries in the program, but accounted for only 12.5% of the Massachusetts population in 2020 for an approximate over representation of almost 3x.

Whites are only 14% of recipients but represent 69% of the statewide program.

We placed a public records request for the reports after the state failed to publish a quarterly legislative report for over two years at mass.gov

Emergency Assistance shelter applicant data collection includes: demographics, how they become homeless, reason of acceptance, denial and exit of the program, repeat use, number of children per age bracket, average and maximum number of days in shelter, risk levels of repeat homelessness and children not attending their original school or origin.

Haitian refugees have been known to be flowing into the program according to WGBH.