An overnight shelter at the state’s transportation building in Boston shuttered its doors Friday, as officials transitioned local and migrant homeless families staying there to a college dorm in Quincy.
The roughly three weeks families stayed in the building marked one of the first times Gov. Maura Healey turned to a state-owned building in downtown Boston to house those waiting for shelter placement.
Operations at the transportation building will shift to Eastern Nazarene College, where the Healey administration previously said they contracted Australian-based AMI Expeditionary Healthcare to run a temporary shelter.
A contract between the state and the organization obtained through a public records request authorizes up to $11.5 million in spending for two temporary shelter sites, the locations of which were redacted in the document provided to the Herald.
Emergency Assistance Director Lt. Gen. Scott Rice said the Healey administration will also open an additional site in Revere where families with children and pregnant people applying for emergency shelter will undergo clinical and safety risk assessments.
“We greatly appreciate the collaboration of MassDOT, MBTA, MEMA and other state agencies who stepped up to make sure families had a safe, warm place to stay,” Rice said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
The temporary shelter in Quincy can house up to 57 families, and stays will not be limited to overnight as they were in the transportation building, a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said.
The Eastern Nazarene College site first served as a temporary shelter before transitioning to a screening site for families applying for emergency assistance. The Healey administration also set up an intake center at the college that is run by Bay State Community Services.
After emergency shelters in Massachusetts reached Healey’s self-imposed limit of 7,500 families, officials turned to the transportation building to temporarily house families and pregnant people overnight. A nearby YMCA offered day services for families staying at the state building.
The contract to run temporary shelter services in between the Executive Office of Health and Human Services and Australian-based AMI Expeditionary Healthcare sets a max spending limit of $11.5 million. The agreement runs from June 26 through Dec. 29, with options to extend up to six more months.
A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services said AMI Expeditionary Health “has not come close” to spending $11.5 million.
The contract lays out two types of shelters, a full-service site with meals, security, transportation, and a limited location with only a fraction of the offerings. The full-service site can run an up to $1.7 million monthly tab, while the limited site can spend up to $196,000 a month, according to the contract.
AMI Expeditionary Healthcare is required to provides shelter guests with services like regular housekeeping and cleaning services, laundry services, three meals a day, security, internet access, “specific transportation services,” furniture for rooms, and basic clinical services like health screenings.
An AMI Expeditionary Healthcare official referred questions to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
The Executive Office of Health and Human Services said state officials “negotiated extensively with AMI on costs, which are in line with cost projections from companies who are also able to rapidly expand shelter provider capacity and provide stand-up operations.”
The spokesperson said in a statement, “AMI has considerable experience in this field and has worked with multiple federal agencies and international entities engaged in crisis response.”