State closes overflow shelter. Homeless migrant families moving to Quincy

QUINCY − Homeless migrant families housed in downtown Boston are being moved to Eastern Nazarene College, according to officials.

The overflow shelter at the state transportation building, which opened at 10 Park Plaza in mid-November after the state capped its emergency family shelter system at 7,500 families, has housed up to 25 families in conference rooms where they slept on cots, as reported by WCVB.

Gov. Maura Healey's administration announced that the overnight shelter at 10 Park Plaza would close Friday and families will be transferred to the shelter at Eastern Nazarene College.

At the Eastern Nazarene shelter, which opened in July, families can stay throughout the day rather than being limited to evenings and overnight hours, which was the case at the transportation building.

The scale and nature of operations at Eastern Nazarene will not change, said Chris Walker, chief of staff to Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, in a phone interview with The Patriot Ledger.

"(There will be) no major change in the operation from how that facility has been running since day one," Walker said. "It's still temporary, it's still for high-priority folks. (There is) no alteration in the overall operation at ENC."

Eastern Nazarene Vice President of Academic Affairs Bill McCoy also said there will be no dramatic changes.

"The operational structure of our Family Welcome Center and temporary shelter ... has remained largely unchanged," he said in a statement. "Over the past four-plus months of the shelter's operations, we have seen the population ebb and flow due to a variety of factors. ... There have been times when the shelter has been near or at capacity, but the operation has proven well able to manage those shifts over time."

Eastern Nazarene will now serve as overflow shelter for families on waiting list

Kevin Connor, press secretary for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, said Eastern Nazarene hosts one of two family welcome centers in the state which have provided services to newly arriving families for the past several months.

“(Eastern Nazarene) also had capacity for short-term stays for families who came to the welcome center, received services, but weren’t immediately placed into shelter because there are logistical challenges to placing people immediately.”

More recently, the temporary shelter at Eastern Nazarene has served “high-priority” families on the state’s waitlist for placement in its emergency shelter system. Now, Connor said, Eastern Nazarene will “provide shelter to other families who are on the waitlist as well.”

The state groups families into four categories of prioritization for placement, Connor said. Criteria for the highest prioritization group include vulnerability to domestic violence, health issues and the presence of very young children, ages 0 to 3.

How long a family remains on the waiting list depends on its priority level and how quickly families currently in the shelter system can transition to permanent housing, Connor said.

The temporary shelter and family welcome center at Eastern Nazarene

The shelter at Eastern Nazarene, which can house up to 58 families, provides two distinct but related services.

Operated by Bay State Community Services, the family welcome center provides families with a health screening and needs assessment, connecting them with other service providers.

A temporary family emergency shelter run by AMI Expeditionary Healthcare, provides food, basic medical care and transportation while the families are on campus.

In September, Secretary of Housing and Human Services Kathleen Walsh told a large group of Quincy residents assembled in a school auditorium that most families only remain on campus for five to seven days.

With shelter system maxed out, families are staying in emergency rooms and at Logan Airport

In a Thursday press briefing, Secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities Ed Augusts said that migrant families continue to arrive in Boston, though at a slightly slower pace than this summer and fall.

"In terms of demand, it's going down a tiny bit," he said. "We haven't seen a drastic drop off."

With state's shelter system overwhelmed, families have had to find other options.

"A lot of families have been staying, sometimes at Logan, sometimes in some emergency rooms, but we've tried to create these overflow opportunities," Augustus said.

"We're going to continue to work on that now that we have some additional dollars to do that with the supplemental funding. We're looking to expand those opportunities so that people aren't out on the street."

Augustus was referring to $250 million for the emergency shelter system included in a long-stalled supplemental budget bill signed by Healey on Dec. 4.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Migrant families are moving from Boston Shelter to ENC in Quincy