Family Homelessness

Affordable, safe, and stable housing is not only a foundation of family economic stability but it is also critical to child health, well-being, and development.

Homelessness among families with children is at a crisis level in Massachusetts. The number of homeless families is at an all-time high with over 4,000 families including approximately 8,000 children, currently living in shelter. The State’s Emergency Assistance (EA) program, administered by the MA Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) provides shelter and other services exclusively to homeless families with children and pregnant women with incomes under 115% of the federal poverty level.

MLRI’s family homelessness advocacy focuses on:

• administrative advocacy to modify or ameliorate EA olicies and frontline practices that wrongly deny access to shelter or wrongfully terminate families in shelter
• litigation and legislative advocacy to improve regulations and to advance programs that create permanent housing solutions for homeless families
• advocacy to improve the service delivery system for homeless families through an integrated systems approach
• training for advocates on complex and changing EA policies and on-going technical assistance and support to the legal service field attorneys and to non-legal services