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Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced On Friday, she made a series of major changes to the state's overwhelmed shelter system as her administration tries to become familiar with costs and space constraints exacerbated by the high cost of living in Massachusetts and the influx of migrants.

The administration will implement a two-track system for eligible families: one offering homeless and migrant families a 30-day stay in a shelter and the opposite a six-month stay. The state may even begin “phasing out” the usage of hotels and motels to accommodate families in need of shelter.

The protection system, expected to cost nearly $1.1 billion in fiscal 12 months 2025, has change into “increasingly unsustainable” in recent times, Healey said. Despite “significant action” and “tangible results,” the changes announced Friday are needed to contain costs and help more families find stable housing, she said.

“More must be done to ensure Massachusetts taxpayers do not continue to be responsible for this federal problem. The changes we are making will reduce costs, phase out the use of hotels and better meet the needs of all families,” Healey said in an announcement.

When the shelter system reached capability last 12 months, authorities arrange a series of emergency shelters across the state. In August, Healey introduced a brand new prioritization system for families, limiting stays on the overflow sites or “temporary recovery centers” to 5 days for those not prioritized. Now, families placed at these sites may have the choice to remain for 30 days under the two-track system.

Starting December 10, families applying for shelter might be “assessed based on risk and need” and assigned to either the Rapid Shelter Track or the Bridge Shelter Track. Families cannot choose from routes.

The Rapid Track is meant for families the state believes are well placed to quickly secure self-sufficient everlasting housing. You are offered 30 working days within the respite centers, although a certain extension is feasible.

The bridge route might be reserved for “high-risk families” and folks with “complex needs,” reminiscent of individuals with mental or developmental disabilities or women with late-term pregnancies. Those admitted on this direction are entitled to a six-month stay, subject to legislative approval.

In the spring, the legislature limited the length of stay for accommodation to nine months. The Healey administration now desires to lower that cap to 6 months.

“We want to make it clear to the families: We are looking for six [months] So no one feels like they don’t have the right expectations,” said Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll . “We believe six months is achievable. I assume that if people find an apartment sooner than six months, they will accept it.”

Driscoll chaired the Special Commission on Emergency Housing Assistance Programs, which issued a detailed report through the shelter system on Tuesday. Friday's announcement was made based on the recommendations set out in that report, the federal government said.

According to the info, almost half of the 7,115 families within the shelter system were staying in hotels and motels on Thursday Condition data. However, contracting with hotels has been the “most expensive accommodation model” and doesn’t provide a super environment for those looking for accommodation, officials said. Therefore, the usage of hotels might be slowly phased out in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. The administration didn’t provide detailed explanations of how it will occur, but said the approach might be based on “discussions with providers” and that families might be notified of advance payment.

The government says it is targeted on expanding current programs to assist more families exit the shelter system. The commission's report found an “extraordinary increase” in monthly emergency shelters last 12 months, from a low of 163 in September 2023 to a high of 475 last September. A vital tool to assist families secure their housing is HomeBASEa program that gives money to cover rent, moving costs, utilities and furniture.

State officials at the moment are proposing legislative changes to HomeBASE that might increase temporary rental subsidies. Currently, families are eligible for a complete of $30,000 over two years or $45,000 over three years. The proposed changes would allow families to secure $25,000 per 12 months in rental assistance for 2 years.

OAKLAND — The sprawling federal investigation that became public last month with an FBI-led raid on the house of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao now appears to be reaching the Oakland Police Department, in line with latest federal grand jury subpoenas served on the town's district attorney's office.

According to the subpoenas, the U.S. Attorney's Office asked the town government to show over all internal phone number directories of the Oakland Police Department since early March. The agency also requested all Oakland Police reports since April 1 involving the politically well-connected Duong family, which runs the town's contracted recycling company and an unknown housing company that builds homes out of shipping containers.

The latest documents sought within the subpoenas – issued on July 10 and 12 and first reported by Oaklandside – represent the primary known mention of the Oakland Police Department in an investigation that has rocked Oakland's political scene.

The investigation got here to light in a startling way last month when FBI agents concurrently searched Thao's home and addresses related to David Duong, his son Andy Duong and their recycling company, California Waste Solutions, on June 20.

An initial subpoena issued days after the raids ended the investigation. Federal prosecutors are also searching for records on Andre Jones, Thao's partner of 10 years and a well-connected political veteran who once served as chief of staff to City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan.

Investigators also looked for documents related to the event of the Oakland Army Base, plans for local homeless declarations and appointments to quite a few boards and departments across the town, including the Port of Oakland.

For greater than a decade, Duong-led California Waste Solutions had been touting plans to construct a large latest recycling facility on a 12-acre site on the North Gateway site of the previous Oakland Army Base. The multimillion-dollar project aimed to maneuver the corporate's primary recycling facility from Wood Street to the Port of Oakland, reducing congestion, vehicle exhaust and the roaring noise of trucks trundling through West Oakland streets within the early morning hours.

But that project appears to have been held up by delays. Although California Waste Solutions plans to start construction on the power in December 2022 or January 2023, construction has not yet begun, in line with Sean Maher, a city spokesman. He said the corporate has “received its permit from the state and submitted all building applications to the city,” but didn’t provide further details on the status of the project.

With the primary subpoena, the grand jury also requested details about Evolutionary Homes, an organization that shares an office constructing with California Waste Solutions and focuses on housing the homeless in converted shipping containers.

The company was founded by the Duongs and Mario Juarez, a political activist and two-time Oakland City Council candidate who was allegedly at the middle of controversial emails aimed toward Thao's rivals in the times leading as much as the 2022 mayoral election, which Thao ultimately won. Juarez was later charged with a felony earlier this 12 months after prosecutors said he wrote fake checks to pay for the emails. More recently, he was attacked and shot at in the times and weeks leading as much as the FBI raids. The attacks are still being investigated by Oakland police, his attorney and authorities said.

The housing company has been increasingly vocal over the past 12 months about its desire for a portion of city funds to handle homelessness. In December, Evolutionary Homes was certainly one of “half a dozen other companies” that approached City Councilman Carroll Fife with ideas to handle the issue, the councilman said.

Touring the showroom — on the bottom floor of the constructing that houses California Waste Solutions — Fife toured the homes the corporate has built. The man leading the presentation was Juarez — someone whose ideas for addressing homelessness “sound like anyone else's,” Fife said. “He was just a little more aggressive.”

Juarez was later certainly one of not less than six people related to the corporate named in the primary grand jury subpoena.

Last week's recent subpoenas appeared to interrupt latest ground by way of the town's funds and funding sources.

A July 10 subpoena requested “all sources of federal funds received by the city” for the reason that starting of 2021, in addition to “the names, email addresses and cell phone numbers of all attorneys who have worked in the Oakland City Attorney's Office since January 1, 2022.”

Two days later, a subpoena omitted any mention of the request for the list of the City Attorney's Office's lawyers and their attorneys' contact information.

No charges have been filed within the FBI's investigation, which is notorious for moving slowly and casting a large net, local lawyers and experts say.

Thao has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and vowed she’s going to not be “driven out of this office.” She has repeatedly stressed that she just isn’t the main focus of the investigation and suggested last month that federal agents had suspiciously timed their investigation to coordinate with a recall try to oust her from the office that was up for the Nov. 5 vote.

Originally published: July 15, 2024 at 12:55

About every third woman and each fourth man will experience domestic violence over the course of their lives. Because domestic violence can escalate to serious injury or murder, survivors must take steps to extend their safety—even perhaps by fleeing their home.

Of the full homicides that occurred within the U.S. in 2020, 34% were women and 6% were men murdered by their intimate partners.

Research has clearly shown the connection between domestic violence and homelessness. For example, a California study found that this was the case for survivors of domestic violence they’re 4 times more more likely to experience housing instability in comparison with those that had not experienced domestic violence.

We are two Psychologists based in Washington DC, who study the experiences, fights And Strengthen of survivors of domestic violence.

In Washington, one in 4 homeless people report a history of domestic violence, with nearly half reporting it direct reason for his or her homelessness.

Domestic violence and housing instability

Housing instability brings its own set of problems for survivors, including poor health, economic uncertainty and that Risk of future violence. These stresses may cause survivors to relapse into abusive relationships or other unsafe living situations.

Knowing the vicious cycle between domestic violence and housing instability, domestic violence experts advocate for interventions that provide rapid, specialized assistance to survivors in search of help Emergency aid for housing construction.

However, all too often these measures fail. Our 2018-2019 study of domestic violence survivors in the town's homeless services found that out of 41 participants only 4 received immediate accommodationeither with a bed in a shelter or a hotel.

We work with domestic violence advocates and advocates as members of the Action Research Collective Against Domestic Violencea project of DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence. This group collectively decides research questions through discussions about what hinders community practitioners' ability to support survivors of domestic violence.

Domestic violence advocates and advocates in our group alerted us to repeated reports of how the county's homeless services system was failing survivors. The group designed a study to seek out out why.

Survivors' access to homeless services

From May 2018 to May 2019, our team recruited study participants within the waiting room of the Virginia Williams Family Resource Centerthe gateway for families in need of emergency shelter in Washington.

Of the 779 clients we studied, 183 responded that domestic violence was the rationale for his or her housing instability; 41 of them agreed to interviews about their experiences accessing homeless services.

A Washington law states that survivors of domestic violence don’t have to prove residency within the county to be eligible for homeless assistance. The guidelines also stipulate that survivors ought to be asked inquiries to sensitively assess their circumstances and that they need to meet with a neighborhood domestic violence shelter coordinator to attach them with resources.

Instead of receiving this specialized support, a lot of our participants reported that they found the intake process confusing and unpredictable. Nearly half said they waited greater than three hours to satisfy with employees, sometimes only to seek out out they needed different information to prove eligibility and would have to start out the method again one other day.

Participants told us they were hesitant to share their experiences of domestic violence with staff and described inconsistent responses after they did. Of the 20 participants who reported experiencing domestic violence during their admission, only 11 reported being interviewed by staff about their experiences and only two met with the power's domestic violence specialist. Several participants reported that after they disclosed experiences of domestic violence, staff simply moved on without asking for further details.

The lack of assist in response to the exposure of domestic violence left many participants distressed. One participant described it this fashion: “I felt discouraged and ashamed because I told all these people that I didn't know my business, only for them to say it wasn't good enough.”

The Impact of Homeless Services on Survivors

Many participants felt that staff ignored their safety concerns, particularly when staff insisted that survivors stick with friends, family or their abusive partner moderately than seek public resources. Participants said that staff sometimes even contacted these individuals without the survivors knowing.

Only 22 of our 41 participants were eligible for the advantages. Four got shelter immediately. Eighteen participants received referrals to public or private sources of housing assistance, or each, but too often these resources were dead ends. Participants were placed on long waiting lists, landlords didn’t accept vouchers, or referral options didn’t meet participants' immediate needs.

For example, “rapid rehousing” is commonly referred to – a program that gives government rent subsidies for as much as a 12 months, after which individuals need to pay their very own rent. Survivors eligible for rapid rehousing must find reasonably priced housing within the county, which represents a major barrier to this system's effectiveness.

As one survivor put it: “Where can I rent if it's not in a slumlord or not in certain dangerous areas?” I'm in search of safety. Getting to safety doesn’t mean I’m attempting to get into danger.”

The 19 survivors who were ineligible for advantages got quite a lot of reasons, often including an inability to prove they were homeless. Ten participants told us that they and their children had nowhere to go after they left Virginia Williams. Leaving without help brought difficult decisions, including maxing out bank cards for hotel stays or begging to stick with family and friends in conditions that created latest problems.

Some of the people we interviewed believed that the denial of support was as a consequence of racist and classist stereotypes of black women wanting to “take advantage of the system.” Given that 39 of the 41 participants on this study were Black, as were the vast majority of the middle's clientele, we consider the chance that racial bias can have influenced the frequent denial of services is important.

Underserved Survivors of Domestic Violence

If we focus only on the interaction between staff and participants, the best interpretation of those results could be that staff are uninformed, uncaring, or each. Or one might wonder if there’s something improper with survivors who seek help—that they’re being turned away because they don't take the correct steps to get help.

We consider these interpretations miss the larger context: In our assessment, these interactions are the predictable results of service providers and survivors attempting to operate in a dysfunctional system in a context where little or no housing support is accessible to the community .

The need for housing programs in our region far exceeds capability. This pushes survivors who lack resources into an unaffordable rental market, triggering a series of cascading problems. The impact falls disproportionately on communities that already face structural and interpersonal discrimination, comparable to the Black women in our study.

Our study shows that this results in a more focused system Determination of eligibility as determination of need and restrict spending moderately than improving the protection of survivors because staff are within the unenviable position of providing inadequate assistance to many desperate people.

These interactions leave many without good options. One of the participants we interviewed summed up her experience this fashion: “I was upset. I was discouraged. And it just left me thinking, Well, maybe I'm not in so much danger. Maybe I can just hold on for a bit longer and try not to upset him or anything. I just tried to do the best I could with it.”