57 migrant families at overflow shelters given eviction notices, must leave by Friday

The Healey administration recently announced that stays at overflow shelters will generally be capped at five business days, although it has also given shelter staff discretion to extend stays by up to 30 business days.Kayla Bartkowski For The Boston Globe

Massachusetts overflow shelters informed 57 migrant families on Thursday that they had to leave their shelters by Aug. 9, according to a spokesperson for Governor Maura Healey.

The first round of verbal and written notices were given to families who had stayed in the shelters the longest, said Karissa Hand, the spokesperson. Some of these families were reticketed, meaning the Healey administration provided them with a plane or bus ticket to travel within or outside Massachusetts to a location where they might have a place to stay.

Hand said state officials and contractors “continue to help other families work through their next options.”

“Massachusetts is out of shelter space and cannot continue to afford the size of this system,” Hand said.

The eviction notices show the reality struggling migrant families are facing as the Healey administration implements strict new rules on shelter stays.

The administration recently announced that stays at overflow shelters will generally be capped at five business days, although it has also given shelter staff discretion to extend stays by up to 30 business days. During the families’ stays, state officials and shelter staff are supposed to help arrange housing options for the families. These options can include reticketing, entering state housing programs, or moving in with friends or relatives.

The decision shocked those in the state who worked with the families. They noted this is a departure from the state’s 1986 right-to-shelter law, which says it must provide shelter and other necessities to homeless parents with children and pregnant women.

Some migrants interviewed Saturday said they are worried about their next steps with no place to go.

The overflow shelter at the campus of the Veterans Home at Chelsea is a red brick building sitting atop a hill. Families walked in and out early Saturday evening pushing strollers or carrying plastic bags to the bus stop.

Wilson Amids, a migrant who has been living at the shelter, said he does not have a place to stay when he’s forced to leave on Aug. 9.

Amids spent the past two months living at the shelter with his 4-year-old son. He was told about his impending eviction this week and is worried that by Friday he will be living on the street.

“If I had family or was working, I would have a plan B,” he said.

Amids is originally from Haiti but emigrated to Chile, where he lived for six years before heading to Mexico. His wife died during childbirth, so he is raising his son alone.

Eribens Gracien, another migrant staying at the shelter, said shelter officials called a meeting this week to let them know they would be evicted Friday. He lives in the shelter with his wife, Evelyne Bresil, and their 2-year-old son.

The young family said they were stressed. Not only do they have nowhere to go, but Bresil is seven months pregnant.

Gracien said his wife is in poor health and has not been sleeping at night. But returning to Haiti, where crime is rampant and where he risks being killed, is not an option.

“If I return, I die,” he said.

In Lexington, Jeperman Geffrard, 31, and his wife, Rosemarie, 29, were returning to a National Guard armory converted into a temporary shelter from a laundromat. They pushed their young son in a stroller as he listened to a “Baby Shark” song on a smartphone.

Geffrard said he stayed at Boston Logan International Airport for 22 days after arriving from Haiti because he did not have anyone he could stay with in the US. His family has been living in the Lexington shelter since July 3.

He said some families at his shelter were told they need to leave on Aug. 9. Others were told to leave on Aug. 16. Geffrard’s family has not received an eviction notice, but he fears it is only a matter of time.

“I don’t know if they’re going to pull me aside today,” he said, in Spanish.

Geffrard and his wife are looking for jobs. They hope to find a place to live on their own, but finding an available and affordable home is difficult.

“I don’t know if we’re going to go on the street or what we’re going to do,” he said.