The Last Homeless Family Leaves the Taunton Hotel Shelter
I visited the Clarion Hotel as the last family packed up and left for good.
Earlier this year, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey double downed on her promise to close all hotel shelters by June 30th, 2025 and for at least one site, she made good on her promise.
I first visited the Clarion Hotel in Taunton in May of 2023, just days after I was tipped off that the city’s only hotel had begun to house migrants shipped to Massachusetts by the Biden administration. My first visit to the hotel was a quick one. I was thrown out by staff within minutes of entering the building and asking questions. I visited the hotel almost a dozen more times over the next two years, including today.
For an in-depth look into the shelter, you can read my three-part series on it here:
Last week, I emailed Taunton Mayor Shauna O’Connell’s office asking for an update on the shelter. Chief of Staff Ligia Madeira responded that the city had been informed that indeed, the shelter would be closing and as of last week, all families that were residing at the hotel had been “resettled.”
As I pulled into the hotel parking lot this morning, gone were the dozens of cars that had previously filled the space. Out front of the entrance I saw a pickup truck and a U-Haul, back open, partially filled with housewares.
I approached the door and found a woman sitting next to the trucks. I asked her if she was leaving the shelter and she said she was. I asked her how many families were left inside.
“We are the last family to leave.”
Perhaps not so coincidentally, I recognized the woman. We had spoken before. She and her family arrived at the shelter back in 2023, just weeks before it became a shelter for migrants. The woman and her family secured emergency housing at the hotel and had been there ever since. They were not migrants, just a family down on their luck.
The woman went on to tell me that after years of asking for housing assistance, this past Friday, just two days before Governor Healey’s self-imposed deadline to close the shelter, the family application for assistance in housing was approved. I assumed that like the migrants who had lived here alongside the family, that they too, were recipients for the HomeBase program. I was wrong.
“We missed the financial cutoff by less that $20. We do not get HomeBase. They offered us RAFT instead. Of course we accepted it, but it’s $7,000. Not the $30,000 that the Haitians get.”
The family, who has lived in Massachusetts all their lives, had been paying to live in the hotel. The price? An astronomical $2,500 a month. When I asked what it had been like living in the hotel and paying that amount when migrants were living there for free, the woman became agitated.
“I wanted to bang my head up against the wall. What made me the most angry was we made too much money and they took our food stamps away. They served food here three times a day but our family could not eat any of it. We were struggling but got no help.”
Another injustice, according to the family, was a room at the hotel that had supplies such as diapers for children. A woman with an infant asked to get diapers from the room but was told that she was not a migrant, so she could not take any for her child.
“I started to get angry for her. Who cares where we’re from? A baby needs diapers!”
The woman shared that living at the hotel became a problem for her and her family from a mental health perspective. She said being homeless was already difficult but once migrants filled the hotel, things got worse.
“At first, we had a pool and a gym here. I was out of work and we had no apartment but at least I got up every day and swam. I used the gym. They even had a restaurant on site that we could eat at. Once the illegals moved in, they closed the pool. They closed the gym. They closed the food. All I could do was stare at the four walls. It became very depressing.”
Constant calls for fire and police became commonplace and the family spent more and more time inside their room. There were four of them in one room including the woman and her husband, their teenaged daughter and the woman’s mother. Outside the room, men walked naked in the hallways, children pissed on floors in common areas and drugs were sold in the parking lot. Needless to say, the family is happy to finally move out of the shelter.
“We finally found an apartment here in Taunton, $200 more a month than what we were paying to stay here at the hotel. I wish rents were cheaper, but there is nothing we can do.”
When asked what kind of a difference it would make for the family had they qualified for HomeBase, the program that pays a portion of their rent for two, possibly up to three years, the woman scoffed.
“Are you kidding me? We would never get that. We work.”
As her husband and a friend came down with a hand truck moving items into the U-Haul, the woman pointed to a mini-fridge from their room.
“The hotel told us we could take it with us if we wanted. They offered us whatever was in our room. They are going to completely renovate this place, so it all has to go.”
I asked what the inside was like and I was told it is a disaster. Filthy carpets, holes in walls, broken doors. The family was told it will take between 8 months to a year to complete the renovation.
“They made enough money the past two years. They can afford it.”
As the family continued to move things into the trucks, the sign saying the property was closed to the public still hung on the front doors, a sign I looked at many times over the past two years.
Before I left, I asked the family if they knew where the 120 migrant families from the hotel had been relocated to.
“Many of them went to New Bedford and Fall River. That’s near where you live, isn’t it?” she asked.
Indeed, it is.
This Substack and the investigative work of this journalist has been sponsored by Silva Funeral Home in Taunton, Massachusetts. Thank you.
Outstanding work Jess
Great reporting Jess!! I wish I could share this story on Facebook.