A beachfront hotel on Cape Cod has come under fire for housing immigrants far beyond the time allowed by local laws.
Since September, more than 20 families have stayed at Harborside Suites in South Yarmouth, Massachusetts.
As the peak summer season approaches, the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals has declared the property violates a local ordinance that limits temporary stays to 30 days or less.
The housing is paid for by the state, which is a huge expense for taxpayers who, this fiscal year, spent $932 million to maintain the shelters.
Rooms at Harborside Suites cost, according to the hotel’s website, $110 per night on the low end. Based on that rate, the 20 immigrant families who have remained in the property for seven months have cost the state on the order of $500,000 for the home alone.
Since last September, more than 20 immigrant families have stayed at Harborside Suites in South Yarmouth, a small coastal town in Massachusetts.
Rooms at the coastal hotel typically cost between $110 and $175 per night, meaning the migrants’ stay has cost the state at least $500,000 so far.
House Speaker Ron Mariano recently said that at this rate, a handful of other state programs will likely be on the chopping block when the legislature meets to craft next year’s budget, due to the exorbitant cost and continuing to deal with thousands of illegal immigrants. immigrants.
An attorney for the hotel, Mark Boudreau, told the Boston Herald that the business owners ‘would displace (immigrants) today if we could.’
‘The immigrants who are there are ready to move. “A lot of them have work visas… They’d like to get going so they can get jobs where they’re going to be,” he said.
Harborside Suite has fought with the Zoning Board of Appeals, seeking to overturn its violation by arguing that state officials said, “the emergency needs of immigrant families supersede local zoning occupancy requirements.”
The board’s vice president says he’s not sure Gov. Maura Healey’s state of emergency over immigrants will override the local ordinance.
“To cities and towns across the state, many of which have a rich history tied to waves of immigrants settling within their borders, I encourage your communities to continue to welcome those families who wish to resettle throughout corners of Massachusetts,” the Democratic governor wrote last summer.
The board upheld the notice of violation, noting that Healey is “urging cities and towns, not directing us to do so.”
In January, the Zoning Board was informed that Harborside migrants would soon be moved to a “larger facility in the Foxboro area,” but that has not yet happened.
Boudreau stated that the property that was designated to become the new shelter “did not pass inspection and had some code violations, so they did not move.”
An attorney for the hotel, Mark Boudreau, told the Boston Herald that the business owners “would move (the immigrants) today if we could.”
But Harborside Suite has fought with the Zoning Board of Appeals, seeking to overturn its violation by arguing that state officials said, “the emergency needs of immigrant families supersede local zoning occupancy requirements.”
The exact date the migrants will leave remains unclear, but previous violations of the city ordinance have resulted in the board giving violators 45 to 90 days to evacuate.
Some Yarmouth residents are as willing as the Zoning Board to see immigrants leave town.
Resident Cheryl Ball told the outlet that she is “pleased” with the board’s action and would like to see it go into effect as soon as possible.
Ball said immigrant families have been “draining our resources.”
‘They are a burden on our education system because we have to pay additional taxes to keep them in our schools. We have emergency services that we provide to the hotel with our tax money,’ he said.
Yarmouth is far from the only small Massachusetts town facing local political clashes over the ongoing immigration crisis.
In February, officials in Taunton, MA, sued the owners of the Clarion Hotel, which had housed immigrant families for months in numbers that far exceeded the property’s capacity limit.