Governor Charlie Baker’s longstanding push to end the practice of putting homeless families in motels at state expense has resulted in Massachusetts illegally denying shelter to the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable, a lawsuit from five mothers struggling with homelessness alleges.

Homeless parents and children who are legally entitled to immediate accommodations are turned away because shelters are full and the state has stopped using motels as housing of last resort, the lawsuit says. As a result, the suit says, children end up sleeping in places not meant for human habitation, such as emergency rooms.

Implicit in the legal action is a more pernicious allegation, one the administration strongly denies: That in service to a pledge made during Baker’s political campaign, the state is hurting residents who most need help.


“By not immediately placing families who are eligible or who appear to be eligible,” the suit alleges, the state “is seeking unlawfully to reduce the demand for shelter placements, which in turn enables the agency to assert that there is no longer a need for motel placements.”

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