It isn’t surprising that the proposal for a homeless shelter on Cape Cod has local residents concerned. Massachusetts has a bad rap for the way it’s dealt with cities and towns in terms of hosting migrants.

It’s earned every bit of it.

This time around, the Housing Assistance Corp. wants to morph its three family shelters in Hyannis, Bourne and Falmouth, into one central space at a former 128-bed nursing home in South Dennis.

As the Herald reported, project officials stress that the 57,000-square-foot facility would house up to 79 homeless families, or 177 individuals, mostly single mothers with infants and young children.

Residents and several officials in Dennis and neighboring Harwich, however, argue the center could be turned over to migrants.

Who can blame them for being suspicious?

Not the folks who enjoyed the Melnea Cass Recreational Complex until the end of January when Gov. Maura Healey announced the state was turning the  Roxbury facility into a temporary shelter for migrants because “we really don’t have a choice.”

Residents were livid, but the plan proceeded anyway. The Cass reopened to the community in June.

The people who live in the Fort Point neighborhood can understand how the denizens of Dennis feel. Blindsided residents were told in February that their neighborhood had been “selected” to house migrants in an overflow shelter.

Not honoring the neighborhood’s request for a community meeting led to “frustration and a loss of trust” among residents, City Councilor-at-Large Erin Murphy said.

“We’ve got 1,000 questions,” a Fort Point resident told the Herald.

Then of course, there’s Norfolk.

That community was also blindsided in May by state plans to use a shuttered prison as the next migrant shelter.

“No one in Norfolk has been too happy in the last week, I can guarantee that,” Ronald Ober said at a pre-Town Meeting, noting he’s lived in Norfolk for 60 years and was a local teacher for 25.

Selectmen said the state had only notified them of the plan days before.

No one wants to be volun-told that their community is going to get an influx of migrants which would impact town services and schools. Especially when they didn’t get a say in siting such facilities, or have their concerns answered and accommodated.

Massachusetts residents vote and pay taxes – they deserve to be treated like stakeholders in the decisions that affect their daily lives. But the state, though itself burdened with housing and caring for migrants and homeless, has treated Bay State communities like chumps.

You’re getting a shelter, and if you don’t like it, too bad.

It isn’t a stretch for the residents of Dennis and neighboring Harwich to view a proposed plan to combine family shelters and wonder if and when the site will become the latest base for migrants.

If the Healey Administration had been transparent from the beginning, consulted with affected communities and involved them in planning and siting, and taken their concerns seriously, a visit from the Housing Assistance Corp. would not be met with suspicion.

And that’s on Healey.

Editorial cartoon by Joe Heller (Joe Heller)