GOP leader proposes slashing Mass. shelter system budget as lawmakers debate reform

Representatives have about three dozen amendments to consider Thursday afternoon when they take up the first substantive legislation of the term, a $425 million mini-budget meant to both fund the emergency shelter program and make large-scale changes to the state's response to family homelessness.

The outlay, which would come on top of the roughly half a billion dollars already approved for shelter spending this fiscal year, would keep the maxed-out system that ran out of cash last week afloat through June, ahead of fiscal year 2026 when policymakers are hoping to see fewer people in shelters and less state spending.

The House bill would impose a new six-month limit on how long families can stay in shelters as well as a rigid cap on the number of families the state will serve in 2026 -- no more than 4,000 at a time, a one-third cut from the caseload as of Jan. 30 (6,012 families).

The reform proposals began with Gov. Maura Healey and have been criticized by progressives and anti-homelessness advocates who believe the changes will lead to greater homelessness for families. The House's rewrite adopted some but not all of Healey's recommendations, and it has been widely panned from the Mass. GOP and conservative groups.

The first formal session for the House comes five weeks into the new term and before either branch has even organized into a leadership and committee structure. The shelter system has required repeated supplemental spending approvals over the last few years and the Healey administration sought its latest tranche of state dollars in early January. The system is believed to be out of money -- the administration said the EA system would not be able to pay any bills that came due after the end of last week.

Representatives are also poised to make changes to the shelter system that Massachusetts has run for more than 40 years without having put the baseline proposal through a public hearing or review of any committee other than the financially-focused Ways and Means Committee. That means freshmen representatives will be asked Thursday to take their first major votes without the benefit of the normal legislative process.

There were 38 amendments filed by 8 a.m. Thursday to the bill that the House Ways and Means Committee released Wednesday morning (H 57), though five offered by Democrat Reps. Marjorie Decker and Mike Connolly had already been withdrawn.

Many of the more big-picture amendments come from the House's 25-member Republican Caucus.

Minority Leader Brad Jones of North Reading filed an amendment (#6) to require criminal background checks for all adult applicants to the EA system, on top of the bill's provision requiring applicants to disclose similar information. The Jones amendment would direct the administration to conduct "a comprehensive review of an individual’s personal, criminal, and financial history, including but not limited to: criminal records at the state, federal, and international levels; employment history; education verification; immigration or residency status; financial history, including credit checks; presence on international or domestic criminal watch lists."

He also filed an amendment (#7) similar to legislation the bicameral GOP caucus supports this session. It would respond to the Supreme Judicial Court's 2017 Lunn decision by allowing state courts and law enforcement to honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers in cases when the person to be detained "poses a threat to public safety."

And Jones also filed a proposal (#8) to trim the bill's bottom line by more than half, reducing the $425 million funding infusion for the program to $200 million.

Those three GOP ideas have the endorsement of at least one Democrat, Rep. Colleen Garry of Dracut is a co-sponsor.

Other amendments deal with shelter incident reporting (Rep. Sally Kerans, #25), how the state should handle shelter situations involving people with disabilities (Rep. David LeBoeuf, #5, and Rep. Rob Consalvo, #24), imposing an indefinite capacity limit of 4,000 families at the end of this June rather than a cap for 2026 that starts at the end of this year (Rep. Michael Finn, #12), removing the 2026 capacity cap altogether (Decker, #29), and expanding EA system exit data (Finn, #15).

The House plans to gavel in at 11 a.m., though debate and roll calls is not expected to begin until 1 p.m. at the earliest.