Editorial: Shelter cost an insane tax hit

Bay State taxpayers are forking over an average of a week for each family in crisis shelter That s according to MassFiscal after the Herald communicated earlier this week the FY bill for the shelter system was just shy of million with the total expected to increase to nearly billion This comes as the state s Right to Shelter Law has drawn illegal immigrants to our state in record numbers Yes the law has been around for decades but nobody on Beacon Hill was smart enough or should we say fiscally conservative enough to dump that law during the situation at the Southern Confines Why is Massachusetts reliably the destination of choice for anyone and everyone seeking a handout The fact that we are paying an average of a week for each family in exigency shelter without scrambling for deep reforms of our emergency shelter law and other generous benefits is insulting to the taxpayers of our state noted Paul Diego Craney executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance He s right and he keeps making excellent points such as If you don t think the average working Massachusetts family could use that kind of money each week after working hard and paying their taxes their whole lives as opposed to just arriving here you re an elitist Craney added The taxpayers deserve much more from their elected authorities than continuing to use their money to fund a system filled with corruption and record after assessment of the bad actors plaguing the system Taxpayers are on track to shell out more than billion over the last two fiscal years on shelters housing homeless families with children and pregnant women An influx of newcomers in and spiked demand but caseloads have fallen significantly since January In a record from Healey s budget and housing offices officers mentioned the tally for state spending on the shelter system in fiscal year was up to roughly million as of July Total spending for the fiscal year that ended June is projected to hit million the document disclosed The Healey administration spent million on direct shelter costs including for the actual locations to house people to pay National Guard troops to arrangement those sites and sites to screen people before they enter the system according to the description Another million has been spent on HomeBase a housing assistance venture that has seen a five-fold increase in demand since Healey took office in Enough is enough The governor inherited this insanely progressive Right to Shelter Law and she has been quoted saying she pleaded with then-President Joe Biden to cap the migrant overflow coming in from Mexico and elsewhere Yet our delegation was too busy trying to secure their jobs in a Kamala Harris administration to care about what was going on at home How did that work out What is left is a budget-busting system fraught with waste and crime A multitude of say that s anecdotal but even a scant illegal immigrant rapes and drug deals is too a great number of We can t be the dumping ground for all of America s ills Somebody necessities to think about Massachusetts taxpayers first for once Gov Healey why not start in the current era