With the state’s emergency shelter system full, overflow sites at capacity, and the waitlist for temporary housing stretching to more than 750 families as of last week, many newly arrived migrant families are stranded on the streets of the Boston area at night, seeking a place to sleep.
In Allston, just past 2 a.m. Saturday, a father laid down a blanket in an alley as his partner held their sleeping 6-year-old son.
Outside Boston Medical Center, at about 1 a.m. the same night, more than a dozen people, including a 2-year-old sleeping in his father’s arms, milled about with their luggage after they were told they couldn’t sleep in the hospital.
At an MBTA station in Quincy Friday, four brothers, aged 5 to 14, slumped over benches and asked their parents if they would have to spend the night outside for the second time in three days.
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“We think we’re going to be on the street again,” Christy, 10, told a reporter in Spanish. “I don’t like to sleep in the street. I like to sleep at home,” his brother Steeve, 5, said.
They are among the many newly arrived migrant families who have been denied shelter and are instead being shuffled each night between state welcome centers, Boston Medical Center, and the often closed offices of migrant aid groups.
As a record number of migrants arrive in Massachusetts, asking for housing and stretching the state’s resources, Governor Maura Healey has imposed ever-tightening restrictions on who is prioritized for shelter and for how long they can stay. The administration announced last week it would limit stays in overflow shelters to five days beginning Aug. 1. Earlier this month, migrant families were barred from sleeping overnight at Logan International Airport, where many families had been staying.
The Healey administration says the five-day limit will help alleviate the problem of families reaching the Boston area and immediately having nowhere to stay by freeing up space at the overflow sites.
“But it is essential that families understand the lack of shelter space before they travel here,” Karissa Hand, a spokesperson for Healey, said in a statement Saturday. “Unfortunately, we do not have additional capacity at this time.”
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As capacity restrictions and time limits at shelters intensify, advocates say they’re scrambling to pick up the slack to keep migrant families safe — often without adequate resources.
“It’s a challenge for all of us, especially us as providers, knowing that when families have no other place to go, they come back to us,” said Geralde Gabeau, executive director of the Immigrant Family Services Institute, which has been assisting new arrivals with housing, legal aid, and other services.
During the day, some families spend their time at open welcome centers, at churches, and at the offices of migrant aid groups. But at night, with nowhere to go, they seek refuge wherever they can find it.
Many evenings, staff at Boston Medical Center — which last year instituted a policy barring migrant families from staying in its emergency department — book ride shares for the migrants who show up there. They frequently send them to the Brazilian Worker Center in Allston, which runs a “welcome center” in partnership with the state. But when families arrive, the center is often closed, leaving some with little choice but to stay outside overnight.
Lenita Reason, executive director of the Brazilian Worker Center, said that “unfortunately there is no coordination” with the hospital. “Families have been discharged late at night and when we arrive ... in the morning, the families are in front of our gate,” she said.
The hospital defended the practice of putting migrant families in ride shares. “Boston Medical Center does not have the capacity or resources to provide shelter to unhoused families,” David Kibbe, a BMC spokesperson, said.
On Friday, migrant families turned up at the state’s Family Welcome Center in Quincy seeking shelter. But several said they were told there was no room for them.
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Around 7 p.m. about 25 people, including children, boarded a shuttle bus at the Welcome Center on the campus of Eastern Nazarene College, which dropped them off at the Wollaston T station. Many scattered through the station’s doors.
Others lingered outside for hours, hoping someone would come help. Some said that on previous nights, a van from a migrant aid group had come to pick them up. Last Monday, a van from La Colaborativa transported migrants from Quincy to the group’s facility in Chelsea, where they spent the night on air mattresses. On Friday, no one came.
Jacques Pierre, the father of the four brothers, scrambled to call contacts who might support them. He scrolled through Google, searching for a motel room at a low price. He had no luck.
“I thought the situation with the housing would be easier, but it appears that these things take time,” he said in Spanish. “Every afternoon, night, they tell people that there is no space.”
The shuttles run between the Family Welcome Center and the T station so that families can get to where they need to go, the state says. But Pierre and his family didn’t have a place to go.
“Family Welcome Centers do everything in their power to connect families with alternative options by offering travel to family and friends living elsewhere,” and housing assistance programs, Hand, the governor’s spokesperson, said in the statement.
Pierre’s family is Haitian, but had been living in Chile and arrived in Boston last Wednesday. They spent hours of their first night in Boston sleeping outside BMC.
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As the sun went down on Friday, his four sons grew restless. Steeve, the youngest, began to cry. “I’m really tired, I want to sleep,” Steeve pleaded. His mother cradled him in her lap as she sang.
Pierre’s family had been seeking shelter for three days, he said. Even though the airport was closed for overnight stays, they decided to try their luck there, and ended up sleeping in Terminal A for part of Friday night. “The most important thing that we need is a space to sleep — soon,” he said.
Volmy Pierre (no relation to the family in Quincy), his partner Marie-Dina Guillaume, and their 6-year-old son, also arrived last week, landing at Logan and taking a taxi to Boston Medical Center. They are from Haiti, but made their way north after living in Chile for years.
Staff at the hospital said they could not stay, and called them a ride share to the Brazilian Worker Center, Pierre said. “They sent us here, where they said we could get help,” he said in Spanish.
But when they arrived around 8 p.m. Thursday, the center was closed. The family spent their first night in Boston in an alley, where a rat was seen scurrying Friday night. The next day, Pierre said, staffers at the center said they could not find them shelter.
The family spent much of the day sitting on the sidewalk, unsure what to do. On Friday night, they returned to Boston Medical Center, hoping the hospital would offer them a place to stay.
But the result was the same. Late at night, staffers called them a ride share back to the Brazilian Worker Center.
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They arrived after 2 a.m. and Pierre set down their blanket on the ground where they would sleep for the second night.
“The truth is,” he said, while Guillaume held their sleeping son in her arms on a bench, “I don’t have anyone to help me.”
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at giulia.mcdnr@globe.com. Follow her @giuliamcdnr. Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com.