Healey’s actions send a message that Massachusetts can do nothing

“This really goes to the heart of our mission, which is to get families out of shelters and into safe, stable, affordable housing,” said Shiela Moore, Hildebrand’s executive director. The new limit on how long families can stay means that “some families may not be in stable housing long-term, (and) that really goes against our mission.”

The Healey administration has taken numerous steps to spread its “no vacancies” message.

On the same day as the Hildebrand session, the governor announced the state prohibits Homeless families and migrants are now allowed to sleep at Logan Airport starting July 9. Last month, several Healey administration officials walked to the U.S.-Mexico border. to “educate” officials and migrant families about “the lack of shelter availability in Massachusetts.” The governor herself welcomed President Biden’s order in June, by closing the southern border to some asylum seekers.

“I think we’ve been clear from the beginning: Massachusetts, while we have a right to shelter law, has had limited capacity,” Healey said at an unrelated event Tuesday.

Taken together, these measures represent the most glaring departure from the state’s tradition of housing homeless families under the 1986 Right to Shelter Act.

It is a moment that reveals that a family’s right to shelter in Massachusetts is not an open-ended promise, nor is it immune to political pressures and economic realities.

And it is a reminder that the laws can’t They still resist the pressure of a strained budget or a political landscape in which immigration remains a top concern for voters, even in liberal-leaning Massachusetts, now that a once-distant border crisis is playing out in residents’ own communities.

For more than a year, the Healey administration, like Democratic-led states across the country, has been trying to balance upholding long-held liberal values ​​with managing a real crisis that is straining state and local resources. She’s also serving as one of Biden’s most important spokespeople while navigating a situation that has only gotten worse. since taking office in 2023.

Healey made clear that her decision to send a team to the border was meant to send a message: “Don’t come to Massachusetts if you’re hoping to find housing. You can only come here if you have a housing plan because we’re at capacity,” she said at Tuesday’s event.

Last fall, Healey first imposed a new limit on the number of families the state’s emergency shelter system, which provides food and shelter to homeless families, migrant families or pregnant women, could accommodate. The system hit that cap of 7,500 families a few months ago. Nearly 700 families are on a waiting list, and many are sleeping at the airport or in temporary shelters that face their own restrictions.

Although a recent University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB poll shows that voters don’t hold Healey directly responsible for the migrant crisis, the state still has to pay for it, creating political pressure. Healey’s office estimates that operating the emergency shelter system will cost $915 million in the fiscal year that began July 1.

The program quickly devoured the roughly $700 million allocated for the fiscal year that just ended and required a temporary injection of funds to keep it afloat. The law that provided the financial lifeline also allows his administration to draw $251 million from a savings account — filled with money generated by the state’s surplus tax revenues in fiscal 2022 — to fund the shelter system through the end of June. The bill made an additional $175 million available for the current fiscal year.

According to a national poll by Gallup, 55% of Americans view illegal immigration as a “critical threat” to the United States, a record high from 47% a year ago. Among Democrats, that figure rose from 20% in 2023 to 29% in 2024.

And states are mostly paralyzed about what they can do. Earlier this year, Healey and other governors gathered to urge Biden to send them money and speed up work authorization for new arrivals, but the call for help has yet to reach Congress, which has repeatedly failed to pass legislation to fix the broken immigration system.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts schools are struggling, their funding eroded by higher-than-expected inflation. Some school districts say they don’t have the support they need to integrate immigrant students, who often need translators and extra social services, even though the state gives districts money for each immigrant student enrolled. The MBTA remains significantly underfunded, even as it continues to provide unreliable services. And the perception that the state is spending too much money on foreigners has sparked an outcry in some Massachusetts communities.

The crisis is exacerbated by a severe housing shortage and an unproductive Congress that has failed to help states grappling with large numbers of migrant arrivals, said Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum.

“It’s really unfortunate,” she said. “We can’t solve the problem at the state level if we don’t have money from Congress.”

Healey isn’t the only governor who has waded into choppy political waters on this issue. In 2014, President Barack Obama asked Gov. Deval Patrick if Massachusetts would be willing to take in several hundred Central American children who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Patrick agreed, and criticism followed.

Patrick, like Healey, believed it was the best solution for the state, said Doug Rubin, who was then a top adviser to Patrick. He said Healey managed to “defend the values ​​that make Massachusetts … while balancing all of that during this crisis.”

“You can survive the ups and downs of the political moment and people will respect you,” Rubin said.

Danielle Ferrier, CEO of Heading Home, said she has no quarrel with Healey, who is the only governor in the country working under a right-to-shelter law. Heading Home has a contract with the state to provide hundreds of family housing units in the Boston and Lawrence areas, as well as a yet-to-open shelter inside the Bay State Correctional Facility in Norfolk.

From Ferrier’s perspective, Healey is trying to meet competing demands.

“It’s really hard to deal with the pressure of a new policy,” she said of the new limits on shelter stays. “At the same time, there are still families waiting to be admitted directly into the shelter system. . . . Our governor has found himself in an impossible situation. There’s no easy solution.”

Others, however, don’t give Healey as much credit.

Etel Haxhiaj, a Worcester city councilwoman and longtime homeless and housing advocate, said the administration’s recent actions “send the wrong message.” Instead of limiting the number of people in shelters, she said, they should be investing more resources in affordable housing and ways to get people out of shelters.

“The right to shelter seems to be eroding,” she said. “They would be better off taking it away than imposing limits that don’t really solve the problem.”

Pressed on whether immigrants are still welcome here, Healey said Tuesday that it was important for people outside Massachusetts to “understand the state of play.”

“I think it is irresponsible and inhumane to allow people to continue to think that there is housing available in Massachusetts for them and their families when there is not,” Healey said.

“Massachusetts has made a tremendous effort, and I’m grateful to those we’ve partnered with and to the communities,” she added. “But I think anything less would be irresponsible.”

The Globe’s Matt Stout contributed to this report.

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You can contact Samantha J. Gross at [email protected]. Follow her @samanthajgross.