On Monday, October 25, the Commonwealth’s House Ways and Means (HWM) Committee released a bill that details how the state will spend the billions of dollars that Massachusetts received through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). In total, the Commonwealth received $8.7 billion from the federal government, with $5.3 billion allocated to the state and $3.4 billion designated for municipalities.

Unfortunately, some key priorities that will help the most vulnerable of the state’s residents — those who this funding is supposed to help — were left out of the HWM bill. The bill includes no support for Right to Counsel, despite the fact that the COVID Eviction Legal Help Program (CELHP) has been successful in preventing evictions. There is also no increase in grants for children living in deep poverty.

President Biden and Congress made their priorities clear when they passed ARPA this past spring.  These funds are meant to help the most vulnerable, the people struggling to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads, and have access to health care.  This current iteration of the bill is a good start, but does not go far enough in meeting those goals and investing in the Commonwealth’s human capital.

The COVID pandemic exposed longstanding inequities that lead to and keep people in poverty.  It also demonstrated (through initiatives like the CELHP project and other projects) that if money is invested in programs that address or mitigate the root causes of poverty, allow people and communities to preserve housing, provide greater cash and nutrition assistance to low-income families, focus on upstream services to struggling households — we all win. This is a unique opportunity for the Commonwealth to be bold and to set the stage for greater fairness, equity and opportunity as we recover from this once in a century pandemic.

The collective goal should be two-fold: 1) to immediately help those individuals and communities most impacted by the pandemic, and 2) to maintain or develop projects that address the inequities exposed by this crisis.  MLRI looks forward to working with the legislature to address the gaps that exist in this HWM bill so that those who are the most vulnerable, the households and communities that have been waiting months (and years) for relief, receive the critical support they need.