NORTHAMPTON, Mass.—2024 was a big year for homelessness. Preliminary estimates from HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) show that homelessness increased across the country by 18% last year. 2023’s increase of 12%—at the time considered historic—pales in comparison to 2024’s numbers.
Some states fared far worse than others; Massachusetts, for example, saw an astounding 53% increase in homeless individuals and a 75% increase in homeless families. The causes for these increases are varied, as the HUD report states, ranging from the rolling back of pandemic-era tenant protections, the cost-of-living crisis, immigration, stagnant wages, and the lack of affordable housing, to name a few. And in a state where median rents are nearly 50% more than the national average, one should not be surprised to see such an increase in homelessness in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts is unique, however, because it is the only state in the country with a “right-to-shelter” law—a guarantee that families with children or pregnant people experiencing homelessness have a roof over their heads. In 2023, the state began contracting hotels to convert to temporary emergency shelters to counter the drastic increase in homelessness. But before the year was over, all these shelters reached full capacity, and families were placed on a waitlist and asked to be patient until a spot opened up at a shelter.
While in shelter or on the waitlist, families gained access to HomeBASE, a state program that could give a family up to $30,000 across two years to assist in housing costs, ranging from first and last months’ rent, moving costs, and even a rent stipend.
To take advantage of HomeBASE’s offerings, landlords have been quick to raise rents to their market maximums. A quick perusal of the rental market reveals one-bedroom apartments for $2,000 in Orange, a rural, 8,000-person town in western Massachusetts. And they are not luxury dwellings. Similar listings can be found all over the state. One might think that only well-off families—and certainly not homeless ones—could afford such expensive apartments. The opposite is true, however.
The brazen rent hikes were fueled in part by new legislation in 2024 that limited the length of stay of a family in a shelter. Previously, a family or individual could stay in a shelter as long as they needed, leaving when they were ready to transition to stable housing. Effective July 1, 2024, however, families and individuals could stay in the shelter for nine months at the most. Even if a family was not ready to transition to independent living, they were ushered into an apartment at risk of losing their shelter benefits.
Some families, whether due to disabilities, lack of work authorization, or other issues, survived on social benefits rather than work for their income. With a limited income, families must rely more heavily on HomeBASE. Because of the lack of affordable housing, families that were not ready to transition to stable, independent living were ushered into expensive apartments. After all, it would have been better for the family to live in an expensive apartment with HomeBASE rather than be out on the streets.
The issue quickly arises that a family without a stable source of income would run through HomeBASE’s funding in less than the allotted two years. Once HomeBASE runs out, the landlord can evict the family for failing to pay rent. From the landlord’s perspective, this is an economical move as they can quickly house another homeless family and gain access to another $30,000 in HomeBASE subsidies. A vicious cycle emerges where landlords are incentivized to increase their rents so that they can reap all the benefits of HomeBASE faster.
For the evicted family, however, disaster awaits. Evictions based on failure to pay rent make the family ineligible for shelter benefits, forcing them into unsheltered homelessness and similar dangerous situations.
For a system designed to get families off the streets and into stable living, Massachusetts is producing the opposite effect.
How did we get here?
This shelter system has been in place in Massachusetts for decades, but only recently has it been put under immense strain. Aside from the high median rents mentioned earlier, another reason that the shelter system has become overloaded is the arrival of thousands of immigrants, particularly from Haiti, who began arriving in 2022. Many of these families were lied to and given false promises of what they could expect when traveling to Massachusetts. And so, when immigrants arrived in Massachusetts with little more than a few bags of their belongings, they were funneled into shelters and overflow centers.
By 2024, Massachusetts officials were quick to point out that the sheltering system, having now ballooned to costing over $1 billion per year, was unsustainable and needed to be changed. The subsequent discussions played out in typical neoliberal fashion: austerity.
Lawmakers were focused on how to cut services and save the state money. Never was there a discussion about raising taxes on the rich. Should taxes have returned to 1980s levels, the state would have had an increase of $1.2 billion per year, enough to maintain the current shelter system. Such an idea, as one might expect, was off the table entirely.
With a path of austerity determined, what then could be the scapegoat for such measures? The Massachusetts GOP, mimicking Trump’s attitudes, was quick to point to immigrants as the cause of the state’s ills.
Several articles appeared in newspapers and publications touting how migrant shelters were hotbeds for crime. One only needs to take a cursory glance to find issues in such articles. Contrary to what the propaganda might suggest, there are no migrant-only shelters; all shelters are a mix of Massachusetts residents, some out-of-state citizens, and immigrants.
These same articles would continue by providing examples of serious crimes, omitting biographical information. There’s mention of drug busts, attempted kidnappings (by people not in shelter), and rape, but the article makes no mention of the background of the perpetrators. These reports are in the article’s context of the “migrant-family shelter program,” but there is no such program. The shelter program is for all families in Massachusetts.
This rhetoric has led to passive acceptance of ICE raids throughout Massachusetts and the country. Even Gov. Maura Healey has stated that Massachusetts is not a sanctuary state, despite laws in place limiting police involvement with ICE, and the fact that several cities across the state, including Boston, consider themselves sanctuary cities.
With the scapegoat identified, the Massachusetts legislature has been quick to enact austerity measures on homeless shelters. In February 2025, the state legislature passed a supplementary budget for the shelter system with key provisions recommended by the Healey administration. These provisions include further limiting the length of stay of families in shelters from nine months to six months, requiring lawful residency status, requiring CORI checks, and adding further eviction limits.
It should be made especially clear that such austerity is not driven by the desire to help those in need but to exclude the majority of people from getting services.
So long as one family member does not have legal status, even if the rest of the family does, the entire family is illegible for shelter. If a family has had to steal food to feed themselves, they may be unable to enter a shelter because of the CORI restrictions. Evictions based on failure to pay rent do not make a family eligible for shelter.
Relatedly, the Healey administration has proposed additional cuts in mental health treatment, including reducing funding for substance abuse clinics and cutting the number of Department of Mental Health caseworkers by 50%. It goes without saying that a large number of people suffering homelessness also suffer mental health illnesses and substance use disorders. Such cuts will undoubtedly make it harder for people trying to escape homelessness to succeed.
Right-to-shelter in name only
At this point, the right-to-shelter law in the state is a right in name only. Materially, the state has been making it harder for families to enter shelters for years. Such restrictions did not exist prior to the mass immigration of the past few years. Massachusetts has taken one step forward and ten steps back.
All this being said, we must also be reticent that homelessness is a symptom of a broken system. Housing prices across the country have ballooned in recent years, and rents have similarly followed. The situation is particularly bad in Massachusetts because the state has already been facing a supply shortage of housing for years. The Healey administration has applauded itself in calling recent legislation the “most ambitious in state history” by building or preserving 65,000 homes. But this “ambitious” achievement pales in comparison to the 170,000 home shortage across the state.
More recently, the administration has proposed a comprehensive housing plan that will add 222,000 homes to Massachusetts across the next 10 years. You heard that right; the crisis Massachusetts finds itself in will continue for at least the next decade.
Massachusetts is thought of as a bastion of progressive politics in the country, often described as the most progressive state in the nation. But decades of neoliberal economic policy, reactionary scare tactics against immigrants, and the inability of the state to adequately address the housing crisis have led to a clawing back of decades of progress. The state of homelessness will not get better. It will get worse. All the while, the Trump administration toys with the idea of criminalizing homelessness and putting homeless folks into detention camps.
And if it can happen in Massachusetts, it can happen anywhere.
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