A Cambridge Democrat applauded a choice to open an emergency in a single day shelter for homeless households with kids and pregnant folks at a former courthouse within the metropolis whereas acknowledging the roughly 150-year-old constructing wants work.
Rep. Mike Connolly, whose district encompasses the in a single day shelter opening Friday on the courthouse that homes the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds, stated there are a number of challenges with the construction, together with plumbing, lack of showers, and infrastructure.
But there are “a lot of efforts underway to address” these issues, he informed the Herald hours earlier than he was scheduled to tour the location with different stakeholders. As temperatures proceed to dip under freezing, Connolly stated officers try to assist households with kids who don’t have any place to go.
“What we’re doing here is making vacant space available so that those most vulnerable folks won’t have to be either on the street, or in some other place that isn’t really fit for human habitation,” he stated.
Slightly greater than per week earlier than a deadline to open one or a number of overflow shelter websites for native homeless residents and newly arrived migrants, the Healey administration introduced Wednesday they have been turning to the previous courthouse to accommodate as much as 70 households.
Retired Lt. Gen. Scott Rice, who oversees the state’s shelter response, stated the choice to open the shelter in Cambridge was made to make sure households who’re eligible for help have a “warm and safe place to stay overnight.”
The Middlesex South Registry of Deeds is overseen by Secretary of State William Galvin, and the courthouse was inbuilt 1870, based on metropolis data.
The emergency help shelter system has confronted immense stress this yr as a wave of migrants arrived in Massachusetts and housing prices made it laborious to seek out an inexpensive spot to stay for many individuals.
More than 7,500 households have been within the shelter system as of Thursday, based on state information. Migrant households with kids and pregnant folks granted entry to emergency help have been lawfully allowed into the United States by the federal authorities and are usually not thought-about “illegal.”
Connolly stated you will need to maintain that in thoughts amidst an “unprecedented migrant crisis.”
“What we are doing here is not just for migrants. This facility is also open to longtime Massachusetts residents who may fall into homelessness and who are also in need of shelter,” he stated.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”