Where Boston's new arrivals are going
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The hundreds of new arrivals coming into Boston every month are often fleeing violence and political instability.
By the numbers: The Immigrant Family Services Institute in Mattapan conducted intake interviews with roughly 500 migrants in November, mostly families with young children.
- La Colaborativa in Chelsea has taken in between 80 and 120 families per month recently. Some are now sleeping in volunteers’ and neighbors’ living rooms while they wait for housing help.
- Centro Presente in East Boston is seeing at least 10 Central Americans show up each week.
City officials have sheltered 48 adult migrants since September, says Danielle Johnson, deputy director of the Office of Housing Stability.
- Migrant families have found temporary shelter through FamilyAid. The nonprofit has placed at least 66 migrants in shelters since July while they wait to enter the state’s emergency shelter assistance program.
- Many of the families come into Boston Medical Center seeking shelter at night after the state’s intake center in Nubian Square has closed, FamilyAid President Larry Seamans tells Axios.
The statewide picture remains unclear. State officials declined to give estimates on how many migrants are seeking, or at least obtaining, emergency shelter.
The big picture: Migrants have been coming to Massachusetts for years, but the latest influx in recent months, combined with increasing homelessness among Bostonians, have stretched advocates and government agencies thin.
- FamilyAid, for example, has not only placed migrant families in shelters, but also 88 Boston residents who are experiencing homelessness, Seamans says.