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Emergency Homeless Shelters Seek More State Funding

WAMC

A coalition of organizations that provide services to the homeless in Massachusetts is asking the state legislature to increase funding for emergency shelters. Advocates also point to a funding disparity that they say shortchanges homeless shelters in western Massachusetts.

Friends of the Homeless in Springfield, the largest shelter facility for individuals outside Boston, sees over 1,000 men and women come through its doors each year, or about 150 per night, looking for a meal and a bed to sleep in.

Executive director Bill Miller said state funding, which comes to $26 per bed a day, covers less than half the cost of the services the shelter provides.

" We have a 30 percent poverty rate in this city. Homelessness is an ongoing issue and we have to make sure we are adequately funded," said Miller.

The statewide Coalition for Homeless Individuals found in a survey of its member service providers that state reimbursements cover just 47 percent of the costs of shelter beds.  The difference has to be made up through private fundraising and the occasional federal grant.

Miller calculates his shelter’s actual costs at $42 per bed per night. It includes the costs of services intended to help people obtain permanent housing.

" We are efficient. We are effective. We want to  be here for the long haul," he said.

The coalition is seeking a $50 million allocation in the House and Senate budgets for the state’s emergency homeless shelters.  That would be about $6 million more than what was budgeted in the current fiscal year.

State homeless services are funded through several different line items in the budget. Programs for individuals and families are funded separately. The Baker administration has made it a priority over the last year to reduce the number of homeless families put up in motels at state expense, and it has been successful as those numbers have come down.

" That is absolutely wonderful," said Miller. " We don't want to see families in motels,"  He pointed also to success in reducing the number of homeless veterans and the chronically homeless. 

" But, in a region with a high poverty rate ,you are going to see people living on $500-$600 a month who end up falling into homelessness because it does not take much to put them off course."

With state legislators deep into their review of Governor Charlie Baker’s $39.5 billion budget proposal, and getting ready to produce the House and Senate appropriation bills, Miller hosted a half-dozen state lawmakers for a tour of the Springfield shelter this week. State Rep. Aaron Vega of Holyoke said increasing the budget line item for services for homeless individuals to an amount equivalent to a reimbursement rate of $30 per bed per night would mean an additional $165,000 to Friends of the Homeless.

"With homelessness comes all the other issues, mental illness, addiction, unemployment. To make sure Friends of the Homeless and other organizations can do the work necessary, we need to get that ( reimbursement) rate up," said Vega.

State Senator Don Humason of Westfield said apart from the underfunding, shelters around the state are being paid greatly different amounts, with western Massachusetts on the low end of the reimbursement scale.

" We take care of the same homeless as in Boston, Lowell, or Lawrence, but we do it for far less," said Humason.  " We could do a better job of breaking the cycle of homelessness if there is a higher ( reimbursement) rate for western Massachusetts to provide the services these folks need to get out of homeless shelters."

According to an analysis of data by Friends of the Homeless, Boston has 38 percent of the state’s population of homeless individuals and receives 65 percent of the state funding for homeless shelter services.  Western Massachusetts, with 13 percent of the homeless population, gets 7 percent of the funding.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.
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