With the state’s family shelter system under pressure from mounting costs and violent on-site incidents, Gov. Maura Healey on Wednesday recommended statutory changes to the decades-old Right to Shelter Law, asking House and Senate leadership to fold the reforms into a supplemental budget.
In a new letter, Healey called for “strengthening” criminal background checks for shelter applicants by requiring the Executive Office of Housing to conduct CORI checks before families are placed in the emergency shelters. She had previously told the press that comprehensive background checks were conducted on all shelter residents, before her administration last week said that had not actually been done.
All family members looking to stay in a state shelter would also have to prove their lawful U.S. residency under the governor’s recommendation, unless a child in the family already has lawful residence. Currently, only one member of the family unit must show citizenship or lawful presence.
The governor is also seeking to require families to show proof of eligibility up front before they are given a shelter spot, and removing the option of someone showing their eligibility through “self attestation.”
A massive number of families have arrived in recent years looking to access the state shelter system, competing with Bay State families already seeking shelter access. Around 48,000 people have lived in the state-run sites over the past three years, Healey said last week.
“The Administration proposes requiring in the line item that all members of the household must be residents of Massachusetts, and that anyone receiving EA show an intent to remain in Massachusetts, which may be shown either through independent documentary verification of an intent to remain in Massachusetts, or through three months of physical presence in the state,” Healey wrote in her letter to House Speaker Ronald Mariano, Senate President Karen Spilka, and the two branches’ Ways and…