Healey Declares State of Emergency to Take Care of 20,000 Refugees in Mass.

By Joanna Lin – Sampan

On the second floor of an orange building on Allston’s Harvard Avenue, the muted conversations of parents and the loud chatter of young children can be heard, among suitcases and toys. In this pocket of the city that is the Brazilian Worker Center, Haitian families seek temporary refuge before continuing their long journeys to hotels or medical centers and pursuing the place where they hope to reside: a safer and more permanent home.

They compose some of the 20,000 individuals, including 5,600 families, living in state shelters in Massachusetts. This is an 80 percent increase from 3,100 families last year, which has left a sustained strain on the state’s housing resources.

Of the 20,000, many are Haitian and South American refugees, fleeing gang violence and political instability in their homelands — and the sexual assault, the daily sense of living in fear, and the lack of human rights protections that too often accompany these issues.

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Source – Sampan

Published August 18, 2023