The Boston City Council voted 12-0 on Wednesday to call on the city and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to provide emergency housing for Haitian immigrants who lost their legal status when Temporary Protected Status expired this summer. The resolution, proposed by Councilors Miniard Culpepper, Ruthzee Louijeune and Henry Santana, urges officials to convert public buildings into shelters for former TPS holders who can no longer afford housing on their own.
A Federal Expiration With No Local Safety Net
Temporary Protected Status for Haitian nationals expired on July 27, 2026, ending work authorization and deportation protections for people who had lived and worked legally in the United States for years, according to the Boston Herald. The Department of Homeland Security announced the Trump administration's decision to end the designation in November 2025, and the Supreme Court cleared the way in June 2026 when it ruled that federal law bars courts from reviewing DHS decisions to terminate TPS, according to the Supreme Court of the United States. That ruling, in *Mullin v. Doe*, stripped legal protections from more than 300,000 Haitian immigrants nationwide and roughly 45,000 in Massachusetts, per the Herald's reporting.
Efforts to reverse the decision through the courts have continued to collapse. On October 5, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded a Ninth Circuit ruling that had briefly paused the terminations for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants, instructing the lower court to reconsider the case under the *Mullin* precedent, according to Envoy Global. TPS for Haiti was first designated in January 2010 and had been extended repeatedly because of ongoing instability in the country, per the Herald.
Councilors Want Empty Buildings Turned Into Shelters
The resolution calls for converting underused public buildings into emergency shelters, provided they meet fire, building, health, sanitation and accessibility requirements, the Herald reports. Councilor Julia Mejia said the city should use its resources and empty spaces to address the crisis, while Henry Santana argued that even though Boston cannot control federal immigration policy, it can control its own actions and resources. Miniard Culpepper said the response must address the immediate humanitarian needs of residents who may lose their housing.
Louijeune, who the Herald identifies as the first Haitian-American elected to the Boston City Council, has described responding to a crisis situation at Logan Airport on a recent Tuesday night and staying away from home until 1 a.m. the following Wednesday. Massachusetts is home to more than 81,000 residents of Haitian descent, the second-largest such population among U.S. states, with roughly 71% of Boston's Haitian community concentrated in Dorchester, Mattapan and Hyde Park, according to World Population Review.
No Price Tag, and a Shelter System Already Stretched Thin
The council did not disclose what it would cost to house potentially thousands of former TPS holders, the Herald reports, though Mejia said she plans to push for funding in the city budget. Boston is working from a tight position: the city used its emergency reserve fund to cover a $70 million budget shortfall in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2026, per the same report.
The state's shelter system offers little slack. Governor Maura Healey capped Massachusetts's Emergency Assistance family shelter system at 7,500 families in November 2023, creating a waitlist that left families without permanent beds, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association. Legislation signed by Healey in April 2024 then imposed a nine-month limit on shelter stays, with later administrative rules capping stays at temporary overflow sites to just five days, per Mass.gov. The state spent $978 million on the emergency family shelter program in fiscal year 2025, a cost the Herald attributes to a surge in immigration. Effective July 9, 2024, the state also barred unhoused families from sleeping overnight at Logan Airport's terminal, instead routing waitlisted applicants to temporary sites such as a converted facility in Norfolk.
Trust Act Protections Remain, But Don't Pay for Housing
Boston's sanctuary protections for undocumented immigrants, codified in the 2014 Trust Act, survived a federal legal challenge in May 2026 when a district judge dismissed a Department of Justice lawsuit arguing the city couldn't be forced to help with civil immigration enforcement, according to the Public Rights Project. The Boston City Council had already reaffirmed the Trust Act in a December 2024 resolution, explicitly barring Boston Police from participating in civil ICE detainer requests while preserving cooperation on major criminal investigations, per the City of Boston. None of those protections, however, come with funding or a statutory mechanism for municipal housing subsidies.
The housing squeeze former TPS holders now face lands on top of an already brutal regional market. Forty-nine percent of Greater Boston renters were classified as cost-burdened in 2024, meaning they spent more than 30% of their gross monthly income on housing, the Herald reports. Affording a starter home in Greater Boston required a yearly income of $162,224 in 2025, up from $97,941 in 2021, as entry-level home prices climbed from $399,554 to $505,319 over the same period, according to the same report.
Boston's predicament is not unique. A national coalition of 47 local governments, including New York City and Los Angeles County, warned in an April 2026 amicus brief that sudden TPS revocations would severely burden municipal emergency housing systems and local economies, according to the Public Rights Project. Hoodline has previously reported on similar TPS terminations affecting South Sudanese nationals in Boston and Salvadorans across Massachusetts, as federal courts have repeatedly declined to intervene.
