(cover photo: CBS News Boston)

Over the last several days, the strain the migrant crisis is putting on communities like Lowell and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in general has come into sharper focus; from the attempt to investigate the site of a former Mill City private school building as a shelter, to Governor Maura Healey declaring of a State of Emergency earlier today.

In that declaration, Governor Healey admitted to already having 5,500 families (more than 20,000 individuals) in the emergency shelter system and said the situation was expanding “in an “unsustainable manner.” What the Governor didn’t say publicly, but that we reported, was the sheer magnitude of new families pouring into that system, roughly 1,500-2,000 families per month according to our sources.

Well, we can now provide you a bit more information on those numbers and the staggering cost in dollars to Massachusetts taxpayers.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

In a letter declaring the State of Emergency to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Healey writes “over the past six months, the demand for emergency shelter has skyrocketed.” As an example, she cites 68-families per day seeking assistance in March. By July, that number grew to more than 100. By comparison, the Governor writes, “in March of 2022 only 25-families per day came to our offices to request help.” Compounding the problem, the number of families able to exit the shelter system to safe, permanent housing has “declined by nearly two-thirds,” exacerbated by a lack of affordable housing in the Bay State.

The cost of this influx? According to Governor Healey, the state is spending more than $45-million per month to assist these families, and even that isn’t enough to keep up with the demands. Think about that for a second; the math works out to more than $540-million, or more than half a billion dollars per year!

Healey concludes the letter by asking for Federal assistance and funding, and saying she will “use all the powers granted to the Governor to issue recommendations, directions and orders to address the shelter crisis.” As we learned during Covid, a Governor’s Emergency Powers can be far reaching.

With the situation so dire, why is Governor Healey not doing all she can to put a stop to the influx if we can’t deal with the crisis already at hand?

To be clear, this doesn’t all fall on the Healey administration. The crisis began under Charlie Baker’s watch. But it’s gotten worse, and rather than asking the federal government to stop compounding the problem, the Governor is simply asking for more money and resources to deal with it, while cities like Lowell are already drowning in an affordable housing crisis, not to mention a homeless, vagrancy, mental health and addiction crisis.

How many affordable housing units can be built with $45-million a month? How many mental health or addiction treatment centers and beds can open with that kind of money? How are we going to care for people already in those systems, while also housing, educating, employing, providing health care and other basic needs for more than 100 new families a day entering the shelter system? For now, Governor Healey’s answer appears to be asking for more federal dollars instead of asking for help to stop the influx.

Which begs the question; what approach is Lowell City Hall and the state delegation going to take with the Governor?