Starting next month, overnight stays at Logan International Airport will be banned, and some eligible families on a waiting list for emergency accommodation will be directed to a new facility in Norfolk, the Healey government said Friday.
Starting July 9, the ban on overnight stays in Logan will go into effect, ending a practice that has become commonplace given the sharp increase in migrants coming to Massachusetts and the lack of available shelters despite the right to shelter in the state.
Earlier this week, Healey sent officials to the U.S.-Mexico border to deliver the news that the state’s shelters were full.
At a press conference on Friday, she said, “I think we have given enough lead time to work with case managers and service providers to find new housing for people.” She added, “We have also made it clear to anyone who is thinking about coming to Massachusetts that we cannot provide housing and that they can no longer stay at Logan Airport.”
While Healey acknowledged that people had come to Massachusetts because of the humanitarian crisis, he said the state had done more than it deserved to respond.
Families currently sleeping at the airport who are on a waiting list for the emergency shelter program will be offered the opportunity to move to emergency shelters designed to handle overcrowding, officials said. Those shelters include a shelter that opened this week in Norfolk that the administration says can accommodate up to 140 families.
Healey last year set a cap of 7,500 families that could be housed in the shelter system at one time, and since then Massachusetts has consistently had a waiting list of homeless people that exceed that limit. Lawmakers and Healey also agreed to limit the number of families in the system to nine months, with some extensions possible.
According to a report submitted to Parliament, as of June 13, 272 families or 919 people were in emergency shelters in Massachusetts.
“The administration has worked diligently over the past few months to increase the number of families leaving their shelters and moving into more stable housing. With this progress, the recent opening of a new safety net site in Norfolk and the new nine-month length of stay rule, we are now in a position to end the practice of families staying overnight in the airport,” Scott Rice, Healey’s point person on the shelter crisis, said in a statement. “This is in the best interest of Logan families, travelers and employees, as the airport is not an appropriate place for people to seek shelter.”
Rice was part of the delegation that traveled to Texas this week. His statement also said the state would continue to spread the word that there are no more shelters available in Massachusetts, “and that families traveling to Massachusetts must have a plan for shelter that does not include Logan Airport or our shelters.”
WBUR’s Simon Rios contributed to this report.
This article was originally published on June 28, 2024.
