Maura Healey says the number of people arriving in Massachusetts seeking shelter is ‘actually going down’

The number of people arriving in Massachusetts seeking shelter is “actually going down,” Gov. Maura Healey said Thursday as federal lawmakers continued their push for more aid from the Biden administration.

Emergency shelters reported 7,531 families staying at sites across the state, with 3,818 living in hotels and motels, 3,656 at traditional shelter sites, and 57 in temporary locations, according to data last updated Wednesday.

Healey said the number of people arriving at Logan Airport “have really dropped significantly” and “things are better than they were before.”

“I don’t know what that’s about entirely. Some of it, I think, has to do with the weather. We’ve had families who have been staying and housed in Florida and in Virginia, who left to come here, some of whom have now returned. So, you know, it’s a situation that’s very fluid,” Healey said during an interview with WBUR.

After the interview, a Healey spokesperson said the state is seeing about 25 families arriving in Massachusetts each day seeking emergency shelter.

“That’s down from approximately 35-40 families per day in the late summer. Please note that many but not all of the families arrive through Logan,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said there were 191 families on the waitlist for emergency shelter as of Wednesday. There were 507 families who left emergency shelter between Sept. 1 and Monday, the spokesperson said.

Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation kept up their push Wednesday for more federal dollars from the Biden administration, arguing in a letter that interior states handling an influx of migrants are not receiving an “equitable” share of aid as border states.

The Bay State, the delegation wrote, is in a “particularly precarious position.”

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“The United States has been experiencing a virtually unprecedented number of new arrivals, with an increasing trend of migrant families ending up in interior states like Massachusetts. This shift in migration patterns has given interior states a larger role in the immigration process,” the letter said.

Healey said she is also continuing her advocacy for more federal money and touted recent workshops where new arrivals received help with work authorization applications. Close to 2,000 people have been processed for work authorizations, Healey said.

“It means that they’re that much further along in terms of getting their clearance and their paperwork to do so,” she said on the radio. “The sooner they’re working, the sooner they’re out of shelter space, and we’ve had a lot of support and interest from employers who are eager to hire people. So that’s good. That’s actually really good for economic development in our state and growth.”

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