BOSTON — Republican gubernatorial candidates are knocking Gov. Maura Healey for spending $30,000 on repairs at a hotel shelter for migrants and homeless families, a cost her administration says has “already been reflected” in reports.

The state Executive Office of Housing & Livable Communities spent $30,273.92 on repairing damages that it determined to be “outside the scope of normal wear and tear,” at the Clarion Hotel in Taunton, according to data obtained by the Herald.

Brian Shortsleeve, a Republican running for governor, provided the Herald with a list of repair costs, which ranged from carpet and furniture replacements to door damage, after receiving the data from the state housing office on Tuesday.

The state has since shut down its emergency shelter at the Taunton hotel, along with nearly all other hotels and motels that provided care for migrants and local homeless families. Four facilities that remain in operation are slated to close at the end of the month.

Shortsleeve requested records of invoices on repairs and maintenance at the Clarion Hotel from Feb. 1, 2023 through May 1, 2025. The state began using the facility as an emergency shelter in early April 2023 before closing it at the end of June.

According to the data, the state housing office addressed eight instances of damage at the Clarion that it said fell “outside the scope of normal wear and tear” and were “eligible for review and reimbursement.”

Hotels are “responsible for their own maintenance and for any costs associated with normal wear and tear that are part of their standard operating costs,” housing officials have said.

In July 2024, the Clarion was reimbursed $6,450.00 – the state’s largest expenditure – for a carpet replacement and repairs to wallpaper and a broken window, according to the data. That came two months after the state spent $6,178.13 to replace a carpet and sprinkler heads.

The smallest expenditure was $1,040 for a furniture replacement, billed on July 1, 2023, figures indicate. The list stops on Aug. 1, 2024, because there were no reimbursable repairs submitted after then.

“We now have it verified that the taxpayers are on the hook for repairs at the hotels,” Shortsleeve told the Herald, “Maura Healey has shown a total disregard for the taxpayers with her reckless spending for the illegal immigrants. We need to end Massachusetts being a magnet state.”

Shortsleeve’s campaign team said the Clarion is the first hotel shelter for which it has received a list of maintenance and repair costs, with other requests pending.

The emergency assistance program, which has cost the state more than $1.8 billion over the last two fiscal years, has caused a heavy strain on taxpayers since 2022, when then-Gov. Charlie Baker converted some hotels into shelters to accommodate the growing need amid the influx of migrants.

At the peak of the crisis, nearly 130 hotels operated as shelters, serving 7,500 families and more than 23,000 people in total. The Healey administration projected the caseload to drop below 4,000 families this summer, prompting the final 32 shelters to close six months ahead of schedule.

“All of these costs have already been reflected in our reports,” a spokesperson for the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities told the Herald Wednesday.

“Because of Governor Healey’s reforms,” it added, “shelter costs are going down by hundreds of millions of dollars, the number of people in shelter has been cut in half and we will soon be out of all hotel shelters for the first time since 2022.”

Despite that achievement, Housing Secretary Ed Augustus, earlier this month, extended a formal emergency declaration that allows the state to continue to impose restrictions on shelters.

Augustus attributed the need for an extended emergency declaration, which will expire Nov. 9, to “economic uncertainty, high housing costs, and reduced federal support.”

The Healey administration spent $758 million on direct shelter costs last fiscal year, including for the actual locations to house people, to pay National Guard troops to service those sites, and sites to screen people before they enter the system, according to a report the state published earlier this month.

Mike Kennealy, the other Republican running for governor, called the list of repairs at the Clarion Hotel in Taunton “emblematic of what may be the most egregious misallocation of public funds in our state’s history.”

“It’s the direct result of failed leadership from Governor Healey,” Kennealy said in a statement to the Herald. “As Governor, I will amend the right to shelter law … to get to the bottom of this fiscal and humanitarian disaster.”

A spokesperson for the governor declined to comment to the criticism from the Republican gubernatorial candidates, referring the Herald to the state housing office.

The initial contract between Clarion and the state showed that the hotel was paid $10.7 million for fiscal year 2024, the Taunton Gazette reported. The city fined the hotel $1,000 a day from May 26 to Sept. 18, 2023, totaling $114,600, for going over occupancy limits, the outlet reported.

Officials in the Bristol County city announced earlier this month that the Clarion is being sold to the Hilton, with the facility in the process of being renovated before it becomes a DoubleTree Hotel.

Hotel operators are responsible for costs in renovating their facilities back to general use, the state has said.

Jon Fetherston, a former emergency shelter director in Marlborough, dealt with conditions he said were “even worse” than those at the Taunton hotel, including “extensive mold, fruit fly and cockroach infestations, rodents, and repeated outbreaks of bed bugs.”

“If there is any intention to reopen the Marlborough Holiday Inn or similar facilities as public hotels again, a full renovation will be required,” Fetherston told the Herald. “And not a minor one. We’re talking about a multimillion-dollar overhaul.”

------------

©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.