Pilot program placed 94 migrant families in apartments at a cost of $69K each
Goal is to move migrants out of shelters and into already scarce and expensive apartments
Housing affordability ranks as a top issue in the 2024 elections but a pilot program approved late last year designed to ease the stress on the state’s emergency shelter program might actually place upward pressure on rents if widely adopted. The state has resettled 39 migrant families into long-term apartments with an additional 55 families having signed leases but yet to move, at a cost of $6.5 million or an average of $69,148 per family.
The goal of the $10.5 million pilot program was to place 400 families in 2024 at a average cost of $26,250 per family.
Earlier this month, VP candidate JD Vance asserted that migrants were driving housing costs up in certain markets with high migrant populations: “Look, in Springfield, Ohio and in communities all across this country … you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”
Apartments.com pegs the average cost of a Boston apartment at $3443 per month.
The Cato Institute explains the basic economics “Immigrants are people who want roofs over their heads, after all. Housing supply is relatively inelastic in many places, partly because of government policies like zoning and height restrictions and urban growth boundaries…That means that higher demand, all things equal, will drive up prices and the quantity of housing.”
The state’s Resettlement Agency Report details efforts by eight non-profit organizations under state contract to “resettle and support refugees and immigrants under contract with the U.S. State Department. The money is authorized to be expended by the RAs to provide services to refugees and other displaced persons eligible for services and to prevent families from entering the emergency shelter system.”
Meanwhile in the last 14 days ending October 17th, applications (not all are approved) into the state’s emergency shelter program were 464 families against only 145 family exits. The average stay in EA shelter - Healey Hotels - remains staggeringly high at 344 days with 7346 families in the program.
The often quoted International Institute of New England, lead by Jeffrey Thielman, is one of the eight NGO’s administrating the program, which through July received $891,000 under the program.
In March, Thielman told the Herald: “We’re not getting the same amount of money the Afghans got, or even the Ukrainians got. What the state is saying is, ‘okay, well, the federal government is not doing what it did for Ukrainians and Afghans and we’re going to do the best we can with the resources we have so we’re going to let the resettlement agencies use their model and apply it to this new population.’”
In the report to the legislature earlier this month the Healey administration admitted progress has been slow: “We are hopeful that we might see improvements in exit numbers in the coming weeks.” The goal of the pilot program was to move 400 recipients into permanent housing by the end of 2024.