Shelter policy

Massachusetts is finally seeing a pivot in its emergency shelter policy, but for towns like Tewksbury, the “Compliance Paradox” remains a daily reality. While the administration has implemented a 4,000-family system cap for 2026, we must ensure this limit is a permanent guardrail, not a moving target.

For too long, the state’s “Right to Shelter” law has been used to bypass local sovereignty. In Tewksbury, we have seen the results: local hotels converted into long-term housing, placing an unfunded burden on our emergency services and classrooms. I applaud the state’s goal of closing these hotel-based sites by the end of this year. A hotel is not a home, and it is the least cost-effective way to manage a crisis.

However, real reform requires three more critical steps. First, we must institutionalize mandatory CORI and background checks for all adult applicants. Public safety in our community should never be secondary to administrative speed. Second, we must move from the current six-month stay limit toward a three-month intensive model. By shortening this window, we shift the focus from “warehousing” to rapid re-housing and workforce entry, ensuring the system remains a temporary bridge rather than a permanent destination.

Finally, we must enact a one-year residency requirement to ensure our finite resources are prioritized for the citizens who have built their lives in this Commonwealth. We cannot have an another “Law for Thee” approach that mandates towns to accommodate growth while the state ignores the common-sense safeguards our taxpayers demand.

George Ferdinand

Tewksbury

Global warming

While self-styled conservatives love to offer local weather as “disproof” of planetary phenomena (“if global warming is real, how come it’s cold outside?”), the news from outside New England is harder to rebut. Fishermen in Greenland, accustomed for generations to working and prospering in extreme cold, are keenly aware that things are changing for the worse.

As the greenhouse effect intensifies, men and women like Helgi Aargil are seeing their livelihoods disappear and their traditions literally melt away. This is a tragedy, and it should remind us that “conservatives” aren’t actually conserving anything — except the ability of fossil fuel corporations to make as much money as they can from selling their products.

The Trump administration’s climate-change policy is basically sticking its fingers in its ears and shouting “la la la la, I can’t hear you.”  It’s an immature and ignorant approach to a genuine problem, one that Greenlanders acknowledge every day, whether it’s cold in Boston or not.

Warren Senders

Medford

Iran

Iran has been ruled for decades by theocratic thugs and mass murderers and, buoyed by their belief that they cannot lose to the “Great Satan” here in America, are about to lose everything. President Trump has the vision and the courage to apply his Red Line – no nuclear weapons or delivery systems for Iran. His actions along with those of Israel defend Western civilization from a rogue gang of Shiite radicals whose mission is to destroy our way of life.

Paul Bloustein

Cincinnati, OH