Healey’s administration hires consultants to guide shelter changes

Smart Ellie Strategies, a Plymouth-based company owned by former civil servant Michael Kelleher, made nearly $100,000 from April to June helping develop procedures and training materials for a new policy that limits shelter stays to nine months.

In his pitch to the state, Kelleher laid out clearly what the job would involve. “The issue of supporting newly arrived migrants is a highly charged, public and controversial one,” he wrote, adding that any policy “will quickly escalate passions on both sides of the issue if it is not carried out in a way that respects the dignity of affected migrants, appreciates the intended and unintended consequences of any decision or action,” and implements the proposed changes.

Kelleher declined to comment Wednesday.

Officials with the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Affordable Communities, the agency that leads efforts to address the homeless and migrant crisis, said it was not unusual for consultants to be hired to help implement and run a major program. The consultants served as advisors, but all policy decisions were made by Healey and top administration officials, said Kevin Connor, a spokesman for the agency.

“Policy decisions regarding the Emergency Assistance shelter system are made by the Governor, the Lt. Governor and the Incident Command Team in close coordination with the Legislature and shelter providers,” he said in a statement. “These recent policy changes are consistent with what the Administration has been saying for almost a year — that the system is overcrowded and financially unsustainable.”

Jeffrey Thielman, who works on migrant resettlement as executive director of the International Institute of New England, said he has no problem with the state hiring consultants to help with the process. He spoke with consultants Accenture last winter about the need to move families out of shelters and into more permanent housing more quickly and felt his concerns were heard and the process had been improved, he said.

But he was among a group of aid workers and advocates who work closely with migrants — including those who typically advise the Healey administration on shelter issues — who were caught off guard by the new policy.

“Partners like us and others should be at the table,” Thielman said. “I feel like we’re missing some steps to make this work.”

On Tuesday, Healey announced more cuts to a shelter system that once offered homeless and migrant families, as well as pregnant women, food and shelter without restrictions.

Starting Aug. 1, the emergency shelter system will limit the amount of time a family can stay in temporary overflow shelters to five days — and then make them wait at least six months to qualify for placement in a long-term facility. The new policy will also prioritize Massachusetts families, including veterans, and people who are homeless due to no-fault evictions or unusual circumstances in Massachusetts beyond their control, such as flooding or fire.

The announcement of the near-immediate changes frustrated and angered nonprofits and advocates working with homeless families and migrants. Massachusetts has long had a unique shelter law that provides homeless families with children and pregnant women with food and shelter, which also extended to newly arrived migrants.

The new restriction “leaves more questions than answers,” said Shiela Moore, director of Hildebrand Family Self-Help, a nonprofit that contracts to provide emergency shelter in the Boston area.

Andrea Park, director of advocacy at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, and Kelly Turley, deputy director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, have long advocated for the creation of a working group to provide advice on shelter policy.

Park, who met with consultants Accenture last year on the shelter admissions system, said it was “crucial” for families to share their experiences navigating the shelter system and provide recommendations on how the state could develop effective policies.

Instead, the state has cut corners, Park said, trying to pull families out of overcrowded shelters before fully addressing the state’s housing crisis.

“The policies that have been developed are really tone-deaf and don’t reflect the needs of families,” Park said. The policies “don’t really put families on a path to greater housing stability.”

The state has long struggled to contain the crisis that Healey took on the day she took office.

Officials have struck deals with hotels and motels across the state to house the growing number of homeless families and migrants who have suddenly flooded into Massachusetts, fleeing economic woes, violence and unstable governments. They have tapped into surplus funds to pay for shelter and launched a pilot program to house migrants. They have expanded “welcome centers” for new arrivals, created a legal services program and sent in the National Guard to help.

But as demand continued to grow, officials cut shelter capacity to 7,500 families and limited shelter stays to nine months. A surplus site in Boston opened and then closed. Families who exceeded the new nine-month stay were given 90-day notices to leave, and those who had been staying at Logan Airport were kicked out.

In June, Healey staff traveled to Mexico to deliver a clear message to those at the border: Massachusetts has no more space to house migrants.

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Deirdre Fernandes can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @fernandesglobe. Samantha J. Gross can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @samanthajgross. You can contact Stephanie Ebbert at [email protected]. Follow her @StephanieEbbert.