Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has proposed full criminal background checks for anyone seeking to use the state’s emergency shelter system. The proposal comes among multiple “significant” restrictions to the Massachusetts right-to-shelter law intended to shave costs, including new requirements to prove U.S. citizenship and Massachusetts residency.

The change would require adult applicants to “disclose criminal convictions in Massachusetts and elsewhere” as well as consent to Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) checks as part of the application process.

“As a former Attorney General, as a former prosecutor, I have no tolerance for criminal activity,” Healey said at a Jan. 10 press conference regarding the new background checks. “I also plan to work with the legislature to take a look at any changes, and make changes to better ensure that the right to shelter law actually aligns with its original intent.”

At the same press conference, Healey ordered background checks on all current and incoming emergency shelter applicants after claiming to have learned the state had not carried out a similar order made last Spring. Though Healey claimed to have made this order last year, that claim has yet to be independently verified. The recent orders come after a late December sweep of a state-run shelter in Revere which saw the arrest of a Dominican national with an assault rifle and over 400 grams of fentanyl.

Massachusetts is the only state in the country to provide any part of their population a right to shelter. Established in 1983, the right-to-shelter law created the state’s Emergency Assistance Shelter System, a state-funded emergency shelter program for homeless families with children. There are currently 6,104 families enrolled in the state’s emergency shelter system as of Jan. 23. According to the latest data taken by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), this year saw an increase of 9,512 Massachusetts families experiencing homelessness, the second largest increase of any state in the country at 74%, second only to New York. 

The changes to the state law come amid an October announcement that the emergency shelter program would be capped at 7,500 families (approximately 24,000 people) due to the state’s “inability” to meet the additional units demanded of the system, citing “newly arriving migrant families and slower exits of families in long-term emergency shelter stays.”

In a letter sent to Massachusetts senate leaders on Jan. 15, Healey wrote that current applicants to the emergency shelter system are only required to disclose criminal convictions “if pertinent to a recent eviction that caused homelessness.” In speaking about the law’s original intent on Jan. 10, Healey said the right-to-shelter law “did not imagine” the current strain on the system caused by the federal government’s handling of undocumented migrants when written 40 years ago, adding that the state would not pick up the federal government’s slack.

Despite Healey’s claims, experts have pointed to a mix of lack of affordable housing and low wages as the central cause for the state’s large homeless population, not undocumented migration. 

“In the face of continued inaction by Congress and no assistance from the federal government,” Healey said in the Jan. 15 press release, “I believe these changes are appropriate and needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of the state shelter system in a way that aligns with the original intent of the law.”

The changes have been condemned by community organizers. On Jan. 16, demonstrators with a coalition of organizations such as the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless and Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI) rallied outside of Beacon Hill in protest of the new changes to the emergency shelter system. Protestors called for Healey to reverse the proposed cuts to the emergency shelter system and instead advocate for further expansion of the system. As one protestors sign read, “Richest state in the richest country. There is enough [for] all!”

In a video from the protest, a spokesperson for the coalition condemned the Healey administration: “Yesterday, [Healey] announced new recommendations that will eliminate the right to shelter functionally, that will stop families and children from being able to adequately access shelter, and will lead to more children and families on the street. We are all bundled up out here, and we know that families cannot be sleeping on the street on nights like this. And it is cruel, it is unjust, it is unnecessary, and we stand in opposition to these changes,” she said.