Whip Clark, Massachusetts Delegation Urge Biden Admin. to Distribute Shelter and Services Program Funding to Massachusetts to Support New Arrivals

Issue Position

Dear Secretary Mayorkas and Administrator Criswell,

We write to urge you to immediately allocate Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Shelter and Services Program (SSP) funding to Massachusetts, as well as other states that are in
desperate need of federal support to welcome new arrivals.

Despite our effort to provide sufficient funding for the SSP, Republicans in Congress fought to
negate any funding for the program, and the recently passed Further Consolidated
Appropriations Act of 2024 provides FEMA with only $650 million in funding for the SSP
program. This funding, while important relief, will be insufficient to address the full scale of the
financial crisis faced by cities and states across the country. The Commonwealth of
Massachusetts alone anticipates spending $900 million on its Emergency Shelter System in
FY2025,1 a four-fold increase since Fiscal Year 2023. As we continue to fight for additional resources, it is critical this SSP program funding is distributed expeditiously and equitably.

SSP funding will provide vital support for a humanitarian response to the unprecedented influx
of newly arriving migrants into the Commonwealth. Over the past two years, families have been
arriving in Massachusetts at a dramatic rate, which spiked in the second half of 2023. The last
round of SSP funds allocated to Massachusetts was in August 2023 and was based, in part, on a
formula that did not fully capture the exponential growth of new arrivals in Massachusetts in
2023. In June 2022, for example, the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community
Development was providing shelter in hotels for 19 families, but a year later was housing 882 families in hotels. Today, nearly 100 towns and cities are providing 7,500 families a place to
stay, which translates to more than 20,000 individuals in the state shelter system. This rapid increase has placed significant strain on the shelter system and communities’ existing resources.

Massachusetts is committed to welcoming immigrants with care and compassion. We are
grateful that Governor Maura Healey, state legislators and officials, municipal leaders,
nonprofits, residents, and faith-based organizations across our state have stepped up to provide
housing, food, medical care, transportation, education, and other essential services to new
arrivals, often on short notice. We are also grateful for DHS’s efforts to speed up the review of
new arrivals’ work authorization requests through clinics in Massachusetts last fall that served
2,910 individuals and helped triple the number of migrants with work authorizations. But the
Commonwealth and municipalities cannot shoulder the serious financial costs of this
humanitarian crisis alone.

Now is a critical moment to provide federal relief to Massachusetts as the Commonwealth
continues its steadfast efforts to care for new arrivals and existing residents alike, as well as
ensure the state’s long-term financial stability. We urge you to expeditiously distribute SSP
funding to state and local entities so that communities can continue to support their newest
residents. Given the far-reaching extent of this need, we also ask you to provide ample funding to
locations such as Massachusetts, which are experiencing particularly notable increases in new
arrivals. As we stated in our letter on December 6, 2023, it is critical that FEMA take into
account new migration trends to destination states and ensure the equitable distribution of SSP
funds.

We deeply appreciate FEMA’s efforts to support our communities in this vital humanitarian
work. We ask you to distribute as quickly as possible this new SSP funding provided by
Congress and to ensure that Massachusetts receives an equitable share of funding that reflects the scale of the financial cost the Commonwealth is incurring.

To support FEMA’s work and to get Massachusetts the support it needs, we will continue to
advocate in Congress for increased funding for the Shelter and Services Program.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
Sincerely,

Source