Children’s HealthWatch Senior Policy Analyst, Richard Sheward, wrote a letter to the editor on family homelessness, featured in the Boston Globe.
Charlie Baker should extend state initiative to reach struggling families
RENÉE LOTH offers sound advice to Governor-elect Charlie Baker: Embrace Governor Patrick’s “social impact bond” initiative for chronically homeless individuals (“A new strategy on shelter”). While social-impact bonds are a social sector darling, Baker should also commit to another radically logical idea: housing as a human right.
In 2012, right-to-shelter qualifications were tightened so that families must prove Massachusetts residency and nowhere else to stay — that is, they needed to cite factors such as domestic violence, natural disaster, or that they slept in a place that is not meant for human habitation.