MA - State-funded housing for illegal immigrants?
Posted on Friday, November 27 @ 01:55:15 EST
Topic: money campaigns cost illegal immigration
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 "There's very high demand for state-public housing,” says Amy Shectman of the Department of Housing and Community Development. In Massachusetts. The state owns approximately 50,000 housing units and there’s no central wait list. So that means those in need of housing, based upon their income, go either to their city or town to sign up.
Topics: Illegal Immigration, state-funded housing, Massachusetts, President Obama, Senator Hedlund, taxpayers
November 25, 2009
Alison Bologna
myfoxboston.com
“It you combined all the households, 85,000 or so are on the waitlist for 50,000 units,” Shectman says. Some families double up on waitlists because there are never enough housing units for everyone who needs them.
During the election year, it made big news when President Barack Obama’s aunt was found living in state-funded housing in South Boston. When, at the time, she was technically in the country illegally.
“These are incredibly complex processes. They’re always very fluid, they’re not concrete,” says Toby Buevin, the policy director at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. It may not surprise you to know that it’s nearly impossible for the state to figure how many illegal immigrants are here living in state-funded housing. But no one is even allowed to ask.
“The status of your documentation is irrelevant per that U.S. District Court ruling,” Shectman says.
It’s a ruling that allows anyone access to state-funded housing, whether they’re here legally or not. Meaning non-citizens can get public housing paid for by tax-abiding citizens. The case dates back to 1977 and a federal consent decree out of Waltham. The result of a class-action lawsuit, the state is now prohibited from discriminating between legal and illegal residents. The Presdient’s aunt, therefore, like anyone else, can get housing under the law, regardless of her citizenship status.
“We like to obey the laws of the land and the U.S. District Court ruled that we are not allowed. It would be illegal for us to kick her out,” Shectman says.
“I think it’s wrong,” says State Senator Robert Hedlund, who is backing a bill which he says, puts “law-abiding citizens” at the top of any state housing waitlist.
“I think the federal government has it right; they require that we screen applicants for their citizenship status in an effort to keep someone who broke the laws of our country and came into the country illegally from getting taxpayers subsidized housing,” Sen. Hedlund says.
But those at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition say that Senator Hedlund’s bill would essentially deny undocumented residents any housing.
“Really with the waiting list there would be no access to housing. And so the way that the bill in its current form is written, you would literally have citizen kids who are being denied access to housing because they might be living in a mixed-immigrant status family,” Buevin says. Senator Hedlund is moving forward with his bill. Right now its in the Committee on Housing, and should the committee approve it, the bill will then move to the full senate by next spring at the latest.
The president’s aunt has a deportation hearing in February. At last check she is still living in public housing in South Boston.
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