Families on shelter waitlists face challenges, find support with schools and nonprofits

An acquaintance from church let Marie Dufresne, a single mother from Haiti, and her 10-year-old son stay at his place for 15 days. Once that ends, they will have nowhere to live.

Dufresne, who speaks Haitian Creole said through an interpreter that she has been relying on getting off the state emergency assistance shelter waitlist to find a place to stay.

While Dufresne was staying at her acquaintance’s home, she met with a homeless liaison from Boston Public Schools, who told her she qualified for shelter and put her on the list. But it can take up to a year for her to get into a shelter unit, according to the homeless liaisons at the school district, said Dufresne.

She and her son are one of 764 families on that waitlist, equivalent to approximately 2,200 individuals.

However, experts and social workers believe that this is an underrepresentation, a snapshot from a point in time when the data was captured.

Waitlist presents 'grave concerns' for families

According to the state, getting on the emergency assistance shelter waitlist is a process based on eligibility – and the order of the waitlist is based on whether a family has a clinical and safety risk priority designation combined with when they were found eligible.

The waitlist presents “grave concerns” for families who are found eligible but have no place to stay, said Andrea Park, the director of community driven advocacy at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.

“Contrary to the way the system has worked since its inception, families may now be determined to be fully eligible and have no safe place to stay but are told they must fend for themselves until a space is available,” she said. “While I believe the prioritization system was a sincere attempt to mitigate harm, in practice I think many babies, children, and families are staying in unsafe places.”

Factors of chance raised for getting on waitlist

There may also be the factor of chance that plays into getting on the waitlist.

“If you're a family and call on the phone, you may not actually get on,” said Larry Seamans, the CEO of FamilyAid, a nonprofit for homeless families in Greater Boston.

Callers may not ask the right question, or get a staff member is might not take the call seriously, Seamans said. “It depends on who they call and where in the state,” he said.

The state has established four overflow sites, in Roxbury, Cambridge, Quincy and Revere. The state has also partnered with the United Way of Massachusetts Bay to create short-term overnight sites called “SafteyNet Sites” for waitlisted families and “pregnant individuals” with no alternative shelter options. To date, the program has launched eight sites across the state, according to the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

Combined, the state-operated overflow and United Way SafetyNet Sites can accommodate approximately 370 families, according to the state agency. Around 350 families are currently in overflow shelters, according to state data.

“How people make things seem less concerning is they use families, but the reality is there are at least three human beings for each family, right?” said Seamans.

There are currently around 3,000 people waitlisted or in overflow shelters.

This number still underrepresents the homeless population, advocates say.

Because when people aren’t able to go to overflow shelters, they are either at an emergency room or the airport or show up at local town administrative offices in an attempt to seek shelter through the local community, said Danielle Ferrier, the CEO of Heading Home, a nonprofit service provider for homeless or previously homeless families in Greater Boston.

One woman's experience

Dufresne is one of those people.

Social workers previously sent her and her son to the emergency room, telling her she had to be “kind of patient” because although they are qualified for shelter, the waitlist is long, said Dufresne.

The lack of stability has been “really, really difficult” for her and her son because when it is time to switch from her current place of shelter, she is left in a predicament where she doesn’t know “what to do and where to go,” she said.

Working with liaisons comes with a communication barrier because not all of them speak Haitian Creole. This has left Dufresne confused about her family’s situation.

She said she knows the social workers filled out paperwork for her, but she isn’t clear on what kind of paperwork because the process was “rushed.”

“Sometimes they don’t take the time to really understand what I’m saying," Dufresne said.

Dufresne, originally from Haiti, went to Chile and then Mexico, where her friends told her she should go to Massachusetts for a better education for her and her son. A pastor she met in Mexico had an organization that arranged bus services to go from Texas to Massachusetts, which Dufresne took.

At the border

This is quite common, according to social workers.

Families coming to border states, like Texas, are allowed legal entry where there are federal resources set up to help them. Then, they are usually told to go to other states like Massachusetts and New York, where they would “find more people like them” and get jobs, said Seamans.

“The reality is that there is no federal support right now of any great import to help those families,” he said. “Along the border states, we've set up opportunities and resources, and those states are sending, across state boundaries, human beings to Massachusetts for which there is no organized federal response.”

The federal immigration system’s policies have split the migrants' legal right to be here and their right to work, which feeds the complexity of homelessness. Not having a legal right to work upon arrival slows down their ability to work and families cannot self-sustain, hence end up on the streets due to lack of a job and income, said Seamans.

“Previous administrations have dismantled the immigration process, there are fewer immigration workers, and the courts are backlogged, so it takes about two years for everyone to get their work visas,” said Seamans. “Aligning work authorizations with legal entry into the country at the federal level solves a larger issue, but it's an election year and a challenging thing to do.”

Homelessness, housing and immigration

Homelessness and housing are now state legislative issues intersecting with a federal immigration issue due to the influx of newly arriving families, said Ferrier, the CEO of Heading Home.

The state right to shelter wasn't designed to absorb the number of newly arriving families who also have very clear legal immigration needs and support that needs to happen more through the Office of Refugees and Immigrants, she said.

"So you're seeing the evolution of a system responding to a crisis,” Ferrier said.

According to state data, around 3,700 families are in shelter units, but the state has added more motels and hotels – supporting about another 3,800 families – over the past year because the volume of both homeless new arrivals and Massachusetts U.S. citizen families has grown.

Total shelter population in Massachusetts

The total shelter population is currently 7,500 families of which 49.2% are newly arrived. There is an almost 50-50 split between new arrivals and Massachusetts U.S. citizen families, according to state data.

Sen. Peter Durant, R-Spencer, believes the right-to-shelter law is making Massachusetts a “magnet state.”

“What we're seeing is that the migrants come in, and they get just this whole cacophony of free services that are available to them under this program,” Durant said. “These costs add up enormously."

The timing is when, he said, the state is starting to struggle with a budget issue for fiscal 2025 with questions about revenue collections, how to spend the money and what the priorities are.

According to Seamans, the law was designed in 1983 because elected officials saw that having children on the streets with their parents would be a greater cost than the cost of running a shelter, as homeless children are more likely to become homeless adults unless there is intervention.

“There are people who believe that the reason why homelessness is so high in Boston and in Massachusetts is because of our right to shelter, and that is an overly simplified, easy target for underlying issues of family poverty,” Seamans said. “It's an easy way to not address the underlying issues that drive families into homelessness.”

Boston's poverty rate

According to 2021 data, Boston's poverty rate is the fourth highest among the 25 largest cities in the country.

The cost of living index value is 48% higher than the national average, and housing is the most expensive category, 127% higher than the national average.

According to Seamans, the mix of a high cost of living and a high level of poverty is driving families into homelessness.

Boston is the nation’s 24th largest city, yet it has the fourth highest number of children and parents experiencing homelessness. Massachusetts as a state ranks third highest for the largest homeless population nationally.

“Really what we should be focusing on and targeting is how to get more affordable housing, and how to manage and deal with entrenched poverty here in the Boston economy,” Seamans said.

Although there is a right to shelter in Massachusetts, there is an income cap.

“If you have one dollar over 115% of the federal poverty level you're not allowed into shelter, so there is a right to shelter, but it's a very high bar to get into it,” said Seamans.

Making families self-sufficient

Other financial issues factor into resolving homelessness and making families self-sufficient, like the cost of transportation and child care.

Dufresne said one of her biggest problems is finding transportation for her son to go to school. The lack of which impacts her job and limits the amount of money she makes.

“Work starts at eight and I get there at nine because I have to take the bus, then take the train to drop off my son at school, and then take the bus, take the train and then head to work again,” she said.

Boston Public Schools gave her two Uber gift cards to help her son get to school, but she has been struggling since those ran out.

Dufresne said her work, a cleaning job at a restaurant she found on Indeed by herself, may fire her because she doesn’t get there on time, which would create more financial problems.

“I’m losing money because I can’t work on Sunday since I can’t leave my son alone. I need somebody there to watch him,” said Dufresne. “I’m not necessarily chasing the money, but you also need money to make everything work.”

Job training, working or in class

Families currently in shelters are obligated to spend 30 hours a week in job training programs, working or in classes.

According to Seamans, the challenge that often precludes a family from getting jobs while living in shelters is that sometimes their children cannot get access to child care and minors cannot be left unaccompanied.

Massachusetts has the highest child care cost in the U.S.

“It takes a very concerted understanding of the dynamics of families and what they need to get to self-sufficiency. It's the ability to work, the authorization to work, jobs that can meet our standard of living and child care costs,” he said.

Aligning resources can help people get out of the shelter system and homelessness more quickly, said Seamans. For example, if you are allowed into the shelter, he believes you should be eligible for other resources like food and nutrition services such as SNAP and WIC, and have child care and workforce training without individually applying for each of those services.

“Is there an opportunity for the commonwealth to consider bundling resources for families living in poverty in a way that either prevents them from becoming homeless or, if they do become homeless, it's organized in a way that helps them get out of it more quickly?” he said.

Help for waitlisted families

While the state’s shelter system is at capacity, nonprofit organizations such as Heading Home and FamilyAid have set up programs to help waitlisted and ineligible families access shelter and resources.

FamilyAid is currently supporting around 1,450 family members, including Dufresne and her son.

Besides putting her on the waitlist, Boston Public Schools referred Dufresne to FamilyAid, who said they will negotiate with Dufresne’s acquaintance to let her and her son stay at his house longer. If they cannot reach an agreement, they will work on identifying other safe places she and her son can stay while continuing to wait to get off the shelter waitlist.

“My main priorities are finding a place to stay, having money, and being able to work,” said Dufresne.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Shelter system evolving with arriving families, nonprofit CEO says