The state is facing a significant financial challenge in supporting the several thousand immigrants in the shelter system, and we are all struggling to manage that challenge, but I do feel that we are doing valuable work with the money we are spending.
I had occasion today to pay a visit to a shelter for over 40 immigrant families within my senate district in Boston. I could only scan the surface of life in the shelter, and this shelter may not be typical, but my impressions added to my confidence in the system.
Catholic Charities staffs and manages the facility. The facility itself is a motel leased by the state from a third party. The facility is secure and orderly. The front desk team — team member shown above — keeps track of all persons entering the facility.
The rooms are modest double-queen motel rooms – very cramped for a family to live in for months on end. This is an older facility that had had an issue with mold, but the rooms seemed clean now. People I spoke with seemed glad to be there.
The food was basic, but presented in a healthy and clean way. Residents had flexibility to time their meals and access to a large refrigerator.
Families have access to the Boston Public Schools and – a six minute walk away – early child care provided by Action for Boston Community Development.
Catholic Charities has designed a strong set of wrap-around services for the residents, providing them all the necessary assistance they need to get launched.
I’ve been most concerned as to whether immigrants are able to transition to work. The service team collaborates with Greater Boston Legal Services to assist residents in assembling their documents so that they can get work permits. It appears that in almost all cases, the necessary birth documents, passports, etc., can be successfully assembled, although it can take time. Staff reported that essentially all residents were working, often more than one job.
Most of the jobs are minimum wage, so it isn’t easy to find permanent housing that works economically for a family, but families are doubling up in apartments so that they can afford to move out of the even-more-cramped shelter. The staff’s central task is assisting residents in negotiating the state’s housing support bureaucracy and contacting landlords.
It does take about a year from arrival to stable housing, but a lot is getting done during that year: From sorting out documentation to learning basic English to finding work to establishing some savings. New immigrants have no documented credit history, so demonstrating savings is important to giving landlords confidence. And the application process for available longer term state housing subsidies may also entail delays.
After people move out, Catholic Charities keeps in touch to help new tenants manage their budget and stabilize their housing.
I got a sense for how closely the state is overseeing these facilities — staff talked about receiving several communications of inquiry or guidance every day.
The staff of the facility seemed dedicated to serving the residents and enthusiastic about the work they are doing. Their relationships with the residents seemed warm.
Ultimately, it was my positive sense of the people – residents and staff – that contributed most to the feeling of hope that I walked out with.
The management team
Thank you for the work you do to support our new neighbors, Will.
Will, whether you realize it or not your sound & steadfast dedication to your work & to your constituents IMHO shows a deep moral commitment to being a good human being. This recent email shows to me a willingness to spend the time to understand many aspects of a governmental program (how much it costs [recognized & unrecognized], how the receivers & givers of support related to each other & to the greater Boston community, and how your taxpayers who fund these programs relate to many issues that affect the homeless & their dependents. Your district is VERY fortunate to have YOU. I wish I could say the same about those representing other communities.
Sounds better than expected.????
I’m so glad you got to witness what was happening at this well functioning shelter. I have been involved as a volunteer for the past 2 years in the work of supporting refugee families. I think that there are big differences between shelters and service agencies and the progress towards independence that families can make. For the last 3 weeks I have been involved through BIJAN in housing families who would otherwise be sleeping on the street because of the Governors new more restrictive policy. I would be happy to talk further about this with you. Best, Judy Wolberg
I have recently had some dealings with the shelter at a motel in Watertown. I agree with Judy that there are probably wide differences between shelters, but from what I saw, the residents at the one in Watertown are doing all right also. However, right now I think the more urgent problem is the horrible conditions for the migrants that can’t get into one of these state-run shelters and are limited to 5 days maximum in the state’s emergency shelter system, so they are forced to live on the streets.
Thank you for doing the visit, and I’m glad to hear you found it a positive situation. Can we extrapolate that all shelters are equally acceptable? Are they all monitored? Thanks.
Very inspiring, Will. Thanks for your service and for another very informative write up.
I appreciate your reporting on your experience with the shelter in our district. I know there are huge challenges in the state. Reading about a positive example – even if it is not typical and doesn’t speak to all the issues – is a good antidote to most of the reports seen in the media. Thanks, Amy ZE
Thanks for sharing.
Excellent. Way better than a correctional facility.
I heard Maura Healy is asking residents to take in families. I got an email back a few months ago asking me to take in people.
I think Massachusetts can’t handle any more. NYC can’t either.
This is costing billions of dollars. Nice of you to visit a shelter.
Millions and millions more to come, Marcia, if Kamala Harris is elected.
There is no limit.
Who is going to house, clothe, educate, feed, and provide other care for these illegals, and how much will it cost in taxpayer dollars and inflation?
Already perhaps 10 to 15 million have been let into the US by Biden, and we don’t know the number who are “gotaways.”
Feel-good posts by Will don’t cut it.
Yes.
Yes.
Besides climate refugees escaping droughts and monsoons, there are millions displaced by wars that the US started or supports and internal conflicts that spill over from them. It’s not as if the US has no responsibility to the victims of the messes it has made.
Evidently, a bi-partisan agreement to manage the border was underway and about to pass both houses when Donald Trump asked that Republicans sink the solution for purely political reasons. I believe we can work this out once we elect federal representatives and senators who are willing to defy Trump, who sees problems in terms of whether it makes him look good. There are other articles out there that bring this up.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-republicans-block-border-security-bill-campaign-border-chaos-rcna153607
Once I hear there are no homeless and/or hungry Americans, when Navajo Indians finally get tap water then I’ll be glad to hear we are sheltering immigrants. As I tell people, ” There’s only one pie,” so when you’re giving billions to one group, what group/s did you take it away from??
Mental health? Opioid addicts? Education? Feeding families? The Homeless? The Disabled?
Catholic Charities has an excellent reputation. I’d like it if you could visit a shelter run by a smaller, newer organization.
Thank you, Will, for your upbeat assessment.
Thanks so much for sharing this experience with us. It is helpful hearing from someone who actually has seen the shelter in action.
So really pleased you could visit a shelter that is run by Catholic Charities – and be so pleased with all they are doing !! I have been involved in these efforts for years and lately with Our Lady’s in Newton and can only say there is no other rewarding work – families are given a chance that our families were given – we all came from somewhere else – and we were helped – that is who we are as a country- we care for each other – in any way we can – so thanks so much for
sharing all you found – Ann
Thank you for your concern. I teach in the Boston Public Schools, so am very aware of the challenges that the children face.
We are all the descendants of immigrants. Even indigenous people’s ancestors migrated from Siberia. The immigrants we are getting now, like our ancestors, are the bravest, hardest-working, most venturesome, and probably the smartest of the people in their homelands: virtually all young, of course. It may take a year for them to be all decently housed and a decade for them to be all working at good jobs, but they are America’s future. Helping them and educating their children are among the most worthwhile expenditures we could make.
Absolutely. Especially when the fertility rate of native born — replacement is 2.1; native-born is 1.7 — is so low (and falling). If we don’t admit lots of immigrants what will happen to the country? It is worth mentioning that immigrants start businesses at twice the rate of native-born.
Thank you Senator for always doing the research and leg work so you are well-informed and can dispel the myths and misinformation.
Thanks for your work on this, Will. Maybe you could add some details on where funding is coming from and how immigrants are contributing to the local economy to offset those funds? Help the cynical see the net benefits?
I’m very glad to have some firsthand information from a reliable source- you!
Thank you!
Betty
No, Betty, Will is less than forthcoming – to make you feel good:
https://howiecarrshow.com/horrors-of-the-migrant-crisis-just-the-beginning/
Thank you, Will, for covering up the scandal of ILLEGAL aliens, their crimes, the cost, and their flophouses.
It makes your liberal constituents happy even if it’s not the truth.
“Horrors of the Migrant Crisis just the Beginning”:
https://howiecarrshow.com/horrors-of-the-migrant-crisis-just-the-beginning/#google_vignette
It’s even worse than that.
Oh, there was a measles outbreak on the Cape or thereabouts, caused by illegals. It was covered up by officials amd media.
If you believe anything that Howie Carr writes, then you must also believe that the earth is flat and that Donald Trump tells the truth.
I read the link you posted. It’s garbage. Carr is not a reporter, he’s a sensationalist. Yes, there was a rape at a shelter. But that was know earlier. Carr did not document a single one of the new allegations that he made. And, if you put some of them in context, which he doesn’t, they make some sense. For example, people living in a hotel generally don’t have washing machines and kitchens available, so they’re going to be dependent on others for that. The $64 per day is for total costs, not just food.
If you want to find real stories with real issues, stop reading trashy tabloids like the Herald and trashier shmucks like Carr and read a real newspaper, like the Boston Globe. There, reporters have been asking legitimate questions and getting real answers regarding the process by which the state put these contracts out to bid, how much the state is spending, what it’s getting for its money, why Healy made all these facts secret when they should be known.
Maybe ask some questions like, if we have a housing shortage and have homeless Americans on the streets, many of them former vets and/or people with mental health problems, how are balancing providing services to them vs. providing services to newly-arrived immigrants? Some homeless Americans say they’d rather stay out on the street, that they find the shelters are even worse. To what extent is the problem these Americans, or to what extent is it the shelters we’re offering. Should we insist that users stop using as a precondition for shelter, or should we provide shelter first and then worry about their drug addiction and/or mental health problems?
To what extent are we worsening the housing shortage by luring America’s best and brightest to Boston? They’re well-paid, and naturally, they want a nice place to live. Nothing wrong with that, but they bid up prices against people who are less well-paid. To what extent is our wealthy, hi-tech sector (on which, just like the shelter system, the Healy administration has just authorized another $1 billion in “targeted investment”), contributing to an over-$1-billion shelter problem?
When will the Healy administration admit that its much-heralded MBTA Communities Act will not create much housing, either in the short term or in the long term, that what housing it does create will not qualify as affordable, and indeed, will be some of the most expensive housing on the market? Is the effect of this law, along with the rest of the rising housing market, to “replace” those who earn less with those who earn more? And if so, is that merely an unintended side effect, or is it deliberate and intentional?
Most Americans don’t want to pay decent wages to the people who produce the products and services they consume, so they’re fine with importing people who will work for less, but then they don’t want those people around otherwise. You can’t have it both ways.
Journalists used to wear the term “muckraker” with pride. Carr isn’t a muckraker, he’s a bottom-dweller who drags readers down to his level. Read something decent.
Just one small point, the MBTA Communities Act was passed in January 2021, Maura Healey wasn’t elected until 2022 and didn’t take office until 2023, so I don’t think you can call it her Administrations’ MBTA Communities Act – that happened under Baker and it’s law now.
Wow Dee, pretty cruel, very broad brush-stroke stuff. Of course one person determines the whole lot. And even the victim is bunched into the whole, getting little compassion, seemingly used to prove a point.?
I’d add, I do think when we welcome immigrants we welcome cultural beliefs that may be different from ours.. And sometimes seriously sexist attitudes. I’ve experienced this. And how to navigate this, when large corporations hire and empower people like this, at times over others? Some can come here only for economical freedom, which doesn’t necessarily mean an appreciation of freedom. How to deal with vastly different mindsets..it’s complicated.
Thank you so much Dee, you are RIGHT
A client of mine has been in the US for over 30 years
( from Greece) yet he seems unable to get himself a Green Card And Social security Card. Did he loose them? I don’t know, but he needs them to get work.
Others, and I have tried. No results.
But thank you for assisting those in need!
This is a whitewash of a story. Catholic Charities and HIAS are some of the many organizers of the invasion.
Mark, it’s hard to enlighten Will’s often touchy-feely, upper middle-class cheerleaders who see walking over the sourthern border *illegally* as some sort of good thing.
Maybe if they lived near the border they’d see the problem first-hand.
We have laws.
What’s the limit as to how many illegals the US can absorb? There is none to these people. They live on another planet intellectually.
Again, we have laws.
The Cloward-Piven strategy is in good hands with Will.
Dear Senator Brownsberger,
I am personally grateful for your service, and your example; of how a person in a political office should take action and report openly, and for providing a forum for all opinions.
Thank you, Will, for this information. Good to know that some immigrant families are being taken care of. But it begs the question of how many more can we take in. The world is chock full of terrible places to live, motivating tens of millions to leave and find a better place to live, as my parents once did. As difficult as it will be, we have to set limits and find ways to enforce them. In the meantime I’m pitching to try to help new immigrants find jobs.
Don, there are NO limits, reality be damned.
Not to Biden, Kamala, Markey, Warren, or Will.
Millions more are on the way, and they couldn’t care less.
Not one thought (except by a few) as to cost, effects on taxes, employment, public health, crime, housing NOTHING.
I find it very interesting that Gov. Healey and her partner don’t take in any illegals as she asked others to do.
we can’t handle any ;more illegals. Ridiculous now If people want them here take them into your own homes, give them money
and shelter, spend your own money ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
I may have seen on TV that Catholic Charities only takes in “families” of some number of children. If you’re single, sans kids, as I am, not only are you turned away from the border but if you make it thru, you may or may not find shelter. People with children are costing us money. My view isn’t popular because in essence I am in the minority. I don’t know what happened over 150 years ago when my ancestors came over. People fleeing war torn countries, running in fear of their lives should be let in, but just because you have mouths to feed, no. Guess it comes down to, the meek do not inherit the earth. For the record, I went thru 16 years of RC schools. I’ve heard plenty of “you don’t need…..” as a single adult.
They take the people the state sends them. They don’t decide who gets in.
Not what I saw on TV but I can’t defend it because don’t know how to research this. Did quick Google search. Can’t find. I would not deliberately lie to you. Just have to agree to respectfully disagree. Too bad I didn’t write down at the time I heard the broadcast. I have read the border turns away single people.
How about fixing the law? Clearly the state cannot take in EVERYONE who appears on the doorstep, as the law currently demands. Any suggestions for fixing it?
The right-to-shelter law applies to households with children or pregnant people only, you are correct that single individuals are not covered under the MA right-to-shelter law, but that doesn’t have anything to do with Catholic Charities.
Keep in mind Bush had, as President, the highest number of immigrants invited here for low wage jobs. Then Clinton got NAFTA through with exporting lousy jobs conditions, and wages, south of the border. Then large companies use cheap labor abroad now..no wonder MAGA came about, no matter how misdirected they are, and despite racist factions gleaning from some.
We need to invest in education, and I mean explore learning modalities, not just dumping info to memorize..Support real creativity, respect for others learning styles and individuality, etc..I’m dreaming though.
I appreciate this update. Thank you
Ok, Bush in the 80’s had the highest invite of immigrants for cheap labor. Then Clinton in the 90’s supported NFTA, which sent jobs south, along with low paying companies. No wonder, even if seriously misdirected, the MAGA thing,
What if we funded and taught ethics 101 in school, and dignity, what it means to uphold these valuesSupported individual learning styles more so from the get go? I’m dreaming though.
Try staying over night if there is a bed available, to get a complete understanding of the problem they face.
I asked Governor Weld this back then. Did not get a response.
Will, thank you for sharing your impressions. I do understand the cost issues but remain deeply concerned about the prospect of shutting the door to some families before they can find alternative housing.
Thanks for making this visit, Will, and for deftly painting the picture of what it’s like for migrants entering our state. By being such a decent, present human being, you represent the best of government. Thank you again!
I am glad to see that they are clean and reasonable shelter.. Now I am not a cruel preson and believe in helping others so I don’t want what I have to say to be misinterpeted as hate. I do wish the state would cap the assisitance to imigrants to 20% – this serves two purposes – helping our own citizens should come first and our citizens should have access first. Also it would limit how many are helped. Now sadly you have to let people suffer sometimes in order to control what we offer them. I see people streaming from the boarder right to Massachusetts because of the “Right to Shelter” law and that is not what was intended I am sure. I am also not a fan of free housing – this should come with a price to each family – at minimum community service of some kind every day – especially if they are not working. – Like I said – I am not a cruel person but I also feel this service has a value and it should not be free