GREENFIELD — After serving as impromptu homes for hundreds of homeless families over the last few years, just one homeless family remains in Greenfield’s hotels, according to the state Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
A spokeswoman from HED said Wednesday that’s down from 54 families living between the Days Inn on Colrain Road and the former Quality Inn — now a Rodeway Inn — on Mohawk Trail when the Baker Administration took over in January 2015. The last family is in the Days Inn.
When Massachusetts’ shelters are at capacity, the state begins using hotels to house the homeless. It’s the only state in the country with a right-to-shelter law for qualifying families.
Amy Swisher, a spokeswoman for ServiceNet, which handles the families’ cases locally, said there were more than 100 homeless families living in the motels in Greenfield two years ago. About a third of them were from Franklin County, while two-thirds came from elsewhere in Massachusetts.
“ServiceNet has added an additional 10 family shelter units to our Shelter and Housing program since that time, and we have worked with the local families to help them secure more permanent housing in this community,” Swisher said. “We have also worked with agencies around the state to help transfer families from outside the area to back to their own communities.”
Recorder archives show the Associated Press reported earlier this year that data obtained through a public records request by The Boston Globe showed there were 538 homeless families staying in state-funded hotels and motels as of May 16. When the Baker Administration took over in January 2015, there were roughly 1,500 families living in emergency housing, the report noted. It attributed the drop to the HomeBASE subsidy program implemented under the previous administration, which provides up to $8,000 to vulnerable families for various housing expenses.
“When families come to the Department of Transitional Assistance, we ask ‘what are the barriers that have made it so you’ve ended up homeless?’ The HED spokeswoman said. “A small thing suddenly becomes some large expense, and HomeBASE is one thing we can offer them to stabilize in place, to keep from becoming homeless, or if they need an extra boost to get them over the hump, like a security deposit.”
Mayor William Martin said Greenfield’s numbers for homeless families in hotels have been low for a while, but the school department plans to review enrollment numbers to see how many of them have found permanent living arrangements in town and are expected to remain within the school system.
The town is required to educate students living in town, regardless of their living arrangement.
“We’ve been monitoring it, and there’s been one family there for several months, and our students in the classroom are down, but many transient families in the local motels have been transferred to permanent housing in town, so the actual drop in students hasn’t been as dramatic,” Martin said.
Having those students register as permanent residents makes reporting enrollment numbers to the state — part of the formula that determines how much financial aid the town gets to help bolster its school budget — easier, and make that aid more stable, Martin said.
“We educate every student in town, and we’re compensated for the enrollment of those students,” he said. “We have fluid numbers (of homeless students) coming in and out of Greenfield and (associated costs) that we need to absorb, but don’t have the opportunity to reflect them in our reimbursement. We’re dealing with incorrect numbers, but real people.”
Typically, the HED spokeswoman, who spoke on background, said homeless families move from the hotels to more stable or permanent housing, in shelters, apartments or shared homes. Where they end up is highly dependent on each family’s unique circumstances, she said.
Ending the state’s use of homeless hotels has been a main priority for the Baker administration, which he spoke about on the campaign trail.
You can reach Tom Relihan at:
413-772-0261, ext 264,
or trelihan@recorder.com
On Twitter, @RecorderTom