Boston City Council aims to end homelessness in 5 years

BOSTON — The Boston City Council wants to end family homelessness in five years as Boston is seeing one of the highest spikes in family homelessness in years.

The council is creating a special commission, led by Anissa Essaibi-George, with the goal of ending family homelessness in 5 years.

“The number of children experiencing homelessness could fill the Pine Street Inn, 3, 4, and 5 times over on any given night,” said Essaibi-George. “That’s a problem and the work of the special commission is to take what we’ve been doing as part of your family shelter roundtable, take those actionable items and now do them."

Nonprofit FamilyAid says they are seeing a 63% spike in the requests from families requesting resources. They say roughly 3,000 parents and children are homeless in the city of Boston. Another 1,800 children and parents are asking for services before they too fall into homelessness.

“Many of them are doubled up. They’re living illegally with another family to make ends meet as they struggle to get back to their jobs and get resources for their kids," said Executive Director Larry Seamens.

FamilyAid is working to provide families more resources in concert with the public schools, Boston Housing Authority, and Boston Children’s Hospital - who has seen an uptick in medical cases connected to housing insecurity.

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