Many migrant families given reprieve from shelter evictions — at least for now

People on Friday walked out the gate of the former Baystate Correctional Center in Norfolk, which operates as an overflow shelter.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff

This story was reported by Mike Damiano, Samantha J. Gross, and Danny McDonald of the Globe staff and Globe correspondents Helena Getahun-Hawkins, Auzzy Byrdsell, Jacqueline Munis, Rachel Umansky-Castro, and Natalie La Roche Pietri. It was written by McDonald.

Friday marked the first day migrant families could be evicted from state overflow shelters, but many of those who were issued eviction notices seem to have been granted a last-minute, temporary reprieve.

Last week, shelter workers told 57 families they would have to leave overflow shelters by Friday morning. State officials said the evictions were necessary to make room for other families waiting for space.

Of those 57, state officials said that by the end of Friday 11 families had left the overflow shelters for other accommodations, including in longer-term shelters, or were provided tickets for transportation to other locales.

A number of other families interviewed Friday said they’d been given a short extension on their stay, and it was unclear how many were not allowed to remain at the shelters, if any. Governor Maura Healey has received calls to rescind the five-day policy from municipal officials in Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Springfield, and Worcester and from social service agencies that say the policy is cruel and inhumane.

Speaking on WEEI radio Friday morning, Healey said accommodations at the shelters are intended to be temporary, to allow people to get back on their feet. The governor’s appearance on the sports talk show was from the Sam Adams Taproom in Boston, where she sipped a beer and parried questions about the migrant situation, saying the shelters are “full and at capacity.”

“We’ve tried to triage this and give people the opportunity and the resources to go elsewhere,” Healey said. “And we’ll see how things unfold today . . . we are trying to manage this in the most humane way possible.”

The temporary overflow shelters in Chelsea, Lexington, Cambridge, and Norfolk had previously allowed people to stay for 30 days with the option to reapply. But under a recent policy change, the Healey administration said it would limit stays to five business days, though it later agreed to let shelter operators extend stays for 30 business days under certain conditions.

The overflow sites were established in recent months after state officials said they could no longer guarantee space for more than 7,500 families in the emergency shelter system.

Outside one overflow shelter at a former courthouse in East Cambridge Friday morning, several Haitian migrants said families who had been ordered to leave today but had nowhere to go were given extensions until next week.

Frantz Joseph pulled out paperwork from the state’s Family Welcome Center in Quincy outside the Immigrant Family Services Institute, which are providing assistance to migrants, in Mattapan on Friday.Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe

Frantz Joseph, a Haitian man traveling with his partner and their two children, was among them. Just after 8 a.m., he said in a text message that he and his family were inside the shelter and “waiting for them to kick us out themselves.”

But when he walked out of the shelter about an hour later, he said that he and other families had been given a reprieve.

Now they would have until Aug. 16 to leave, he said.

The only family that left the shelter for good on Friday, Joseph and other migrants said, had done so voluntarily. That family — a man, woman, and young boy — loaded their suitcases into a ride-hailing vehicle at 9 a.m. The driver said he was taking the family to Springfield. Before they pulled away, the boy, sitting in the backseat, gave a thumbs up to another boy standing on the sidewalk.

The overflow shelters, a Healey spokesperson said, help families find safe alternative housing. Social service providers there are “actively working with families on rehousing plans and families who have not already relocated are being provided with extensions when extra time is needed to determine next steps.”

Almost exactly one year ago, Healey declared a state of emergency because of the shelter crisis and, weeks later, said she would activate up to 250 members of the National Guard to help families living in some hotels.

People who've been staying in the Cambridge overflow shelter walked down a nearby street on Friday morning. The shelter closes during business hours.Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe

Then, last fall, Healey capped capacity in state-run emergency shelters. And on May 1, state officials began to limit stays in state-run overflow shelters to 30 days, requiring people to reapply monthly and show they are also seeking work authorization, pursuing new housing, or taking other steps.

Earlier this week, state authorities said there were 7,396 families in the emergency family shelter system and 271 families at the overflow centers. The cost of running the state’s emergency shelter system through the next fiscal year will be more than $1 billion. Healey said Friday that half the people staying in shelters are Massachusetts families.

In Chelsea Friday morning, JD John, a 35-year-old Haitian who has been staying at an overflow shelter site at the old Soldiers Home, left that shelter on a bus with other migrants. He said he was planning to head to Mattapan to look for work and shelter. He said he has been in Massachusetts for two months with his wife and two children. There was a time he felt supported at the Chelsea shelter, but now he is being asked to leave.

”I want a place to stay with my family while I work to help the family,” he said.

Another migrant, Eribens Gracien, said he was worried that last week that he and his 2-year-old son and pregnant wife would end up homeless after being evicted from the Chelsea overflow shelter. After a doctor’s appointment for his wife earlier this week, however, he said a doctor contacted shelter officials to try to work out a solution to his impending eviction.

In a phone interview Friday, he said he was granted an extension until Aug. 16.

”I feel good,” Gracien said.

At the temporary shelter at the old Bay State Correctional Center in Norfolk, none of the 10 families that received eviction notices were forced out of the facility Friday, said Danielle Ferrier, chief executive of Heading Home, which manages the shelter.

Ferrier said her organization had brought on more staff to help families with the housing search. Some managed to secure alternative safe housing options, and others in the process of finding housing had their evictions extended for up to 30 days, she said.

”We’ve all sighed a little bit of a breath today that we got through week one, and no families are on the street for us at Heading Home,” Ferrier said.

In Lexington, where the National Guard Armory serves as an overflow shelter, many people were frustrated with the uncertainty. Some migrants said the families had been given one of three new eviction dates: Aug. 16, 23, and 30. Many acknowledged they didn’t know where they would go next.

People boarded an MBTA bus at Hartwell Avenue in Lexington after leaving the shelter on their way to Alewife Station on Friday. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

Louis Bernard Julio, 46, who is originally from Chile, has been at the shelter for two months and has a move-out date of Aug. 23.

“I don’t know where to go,” he said in Spanish. “Many people don’t.”

In Quincy Friday, a number of families who have been unable to get into overflow shelters because they are full were staying in tents set up by advocates outside a local church in response to the five-day shelter limit.

”It’s not fair to families to live [in tents] like this,” Judy Wolberg, a volunteer for the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network said. “We’re doing this to mitigate the danger that they are being subjected to by the new rules.”