Late last week, the MA Senate passed its FY25 budget totaling $57.9 billion.
Overall, housing and homelessness programs stayed intact with some funding increases in some areas. Thank you to our western Massachusetts Senators Comerford, Durant, Gomez, Mark, Oliveira and Velis for their support for this budget!
Please check out CHAPA’s Budget Tracker to see total outcomes and the differences between the House and Senate budgets in some of our key programs.
Additionally, we can celebrate some wins for housing stability through other anti-poverty measures, including:
- the inclusion of HomeBASE languageto allow families to stay in the program after exceeding income eligibility for more than 12 months if needed to retain housing stability;
- a 10% grant increase for Emergency Aid for the Elderly, Disabled and Children (EAEDC);
- a $50 increase for the TAFDC children’s clothing allowance
We are also thankful to all our western MA Senators for their support of the Network itself with their allocation of $50,000 in state funding to support our work!
We know there are other items that are in the House budget, but not the Senate, of particular note:
- Access to Counsel in Evictions
- Shelter Workforce Development for Individual Shelters
Next stop is the Conference Committee process to work out differences between the two versions of the budget. Please stay tuned on further actions to weigh in on these final outcomes.
