House Budget Roundup: Some Key Provisions

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick proposes $25 million in new funding to aid homeless families

Published: Saturday, April 21, 2012, 10:00 AM     Updated: Saturday, April 21, 2012, 12:02 PM

By Peter Goonan, The Republican The Republican

Massachusetts is taking aim at reducing the numbers of homeless families housed in hotels and motels with a “housing first” strategy that includes adoption of a targeted emergency shelter system and spending an additional $25 million for permanent housing and support services.
“We think we can dramatically reduce motel-hotel use,” Aaron Gornstein, undersecretary for the state Department of Housing and Community Development, told the editorial board of The Republican recently. “My focus is to reduce it to zero.”
Gornstein visited Springfield to urge support for budget reforms proposed by Gov. Deval L. Patrick to combat high numbers of families being housed at state expense in hotels and motels across the commonwealth while they await placement in more permanent housing.
“Investments in our successful ‘Housing First’ programs and public housing stock, combined with a targeted emergency shelter system, are critical to combating homelessness in the commonwealth,” Gornstein said.
As of April 3, there were 1,463 families housed in motels and hotels, including 393 in Western Massachusetts. That compared to 1,332 families in January, including 342 families with 680 children in hotels in Chicopee, Greenfield, Holyoke, Springfield and West Springfield. In July 2011, the number statewide was 1,741 families.
Patrick’s budget reforms for fiscal 2013 include proposals to shift an additional $25 million for permanent housing and support services, as part of a “rapid rehousing” strategy, Gornstein said. By limiting shelter to families in emergency situations, the goal is to get more families out of shelters and motels with an estimated savings of $25 million and reinvest the savings into housing programs, he said.

That will serve to get more homeless families out of emergency shelters and motels, and into apartments, he said.
A prolonged stay in hotels for use as housing is detrimental to the family and a financial burden to the state, Gornstein said.

The proposed changes are being praised by regional advocates for the homeless, who say the changes would provide a stronger, more fiscally responsible and compassionate response to the plight of families housed in emergency shelters and motels.
The reform proposals are “an outgrowth of tried and true practices of the networks across the state,” said Pamela Schwartz, executive director of the Western Massachusetts Network to End Homelessness. In 2009, there were grants issued to networks for the homeless statewide to build on a “housing first” strategy, finding homes for the homeless and helping to stabilize their lives, she said.

“I think the governor’s reforms are vitally important,” Schwartz said. “The reforms are a reflection of the best practices that followed from the state pilot program.”

The House Ways & Means budget “adopts many of the Governor’s proposals and demonstrates their shared commitment to a housing first response for families experiencing instability,” Gornstein said.
The legislative review continues, and Gornstein said he hopes the budget adopted by the Legislature “includes the responsible safety net we’ve outlined and the investments we feel are necessary to reduce homelessness in Massachusetts.”

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ACTIVISTS SEE HOMELESS TEENS AS GROWING PROBLEM IN MASSACHUSETTS

By Colleen Quinn
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, APRIL 18, 2012…..Diamond McMillion vividly remembers constantly feeling cold when she became homeless at 16 years old.

For the first two years she lived on the streets – sleeping in elevator shafts, under bridges, in parks – she could not shake the cold.

“There was no way to ever get warm,” she said.

Now 26 years old, she still shutters when she talks about it. McMillion was homeless for nearly a decade.

She remembers hopping from rooftop to rooftop along Boylston Street, looking for an apartment building that she and a band of other homeless teens could pry their way into to spend the night. The only bathrooms she ever used were in gas stations, but that never lasted long because attendants quickly caught on and banned her from using them.

Hunger always lingered among her group of homeless teens. One woman in the group, who was 19, prostituted herself to “make sure we all ate,” McMillion said. The young woman is dead now, like many of the people McMillion knew living on the streets – either dead or in jail, she said.

McMillion said there are many teenagers and young adults like her, living on the streets alone without family, fighting to survive.

State officials and those who advocate for the homeless say there is an alarmingly large population of so-called unaccompanied homeless young people, ages 14 to 22, living on the streets and in shelters across Massachusetts. The figure is growing, and too big to get a grasp of because homeless teenagers often hide their plight, and go uncounted, advocates say.

Massachusetts was one of the first states to include a question about homelessness in the student risk behavioral study school districts conduct for the federal government every two years, according to homeless advocates.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education gives the Youth Risk Behavior Survey in odd-number years to high school students in randomly selected public high schools across the state. The survey results are weighted to produce representative estimates of the entire public high school population, according to DESE.

In the 2009 YRBS survey – the most recent data available – 4.3 percent of Massachusetts public high school students identified themselves as homeless. Extrapolated to the entire high school population, it would equal roughly 12,500 students, according to a spokesman for DESE. The survey does not ask whether they are homeless with family members. But the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless estimates 6,000 teenagers are unaccompanied homeless, taking into account those who self-identify and predicting the number who keep it secret and those who drop out of school.

Schools also report the number of homeless students they can identify to DESE. In the 2010-11 school year, school officials reported a total of 14,247 students who identified themselves as homeless across all grades kindergarten through 12. Of that number, 4,195 students were in high school.

Those who work with the homeless say the figures do not paint an accurate picture of the problem because they only identify those who admit to being homeless. Most try to hide it, making sure they go unnoticed because they are ashamed of being homeless, while others without families fear they will be sent to foster care. Some try to protect their parents by keeping their homelessness hidden, advocates said. Many homeless teens drop out of school so no one counts them.

Officials from the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, founded in 1981, said they have never before witnessed such high levels of unaccompanied homeless youth. They attribute it partly to the recession.

“This particular issue has been percolating for a while,” said Robyn Frost, executive director of the coalition. “What we are hearing across the state is, in some cases, kids are leaving their homes because their parents really can’t afford to care for them anymore. Families are just being shoved into poverty.”

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