On June 30, 2014 the state's Emergency Assistance program that uses hotels across the Commonwealth to house families when the 2,000 shelter beds are full - at the tune of $82 a night, SHOULD have ended. However, Governor Deval Patrick extended the program - using another 12.3 million of the taxpayer's dollars to continue to house people in hotels. This placement system is detrimentally inefficient and fiscally irresponsible, with over 2,000 families currently being housed at about $82 a night (approximately $2,500 a month per family). Massachusetts must come up with a better plan, one that provides long-term solutions for people who meet stricter residency requirements. Massachusetts is the ONLY state within the United States to offer its "residents" a "right to shelter." Essentially this means that anyone who shows up without a place to sleep, regardless of how long he or she has been a resident, is guaranteed shelter. This practice is most certainly a major reason why Massachusetts is experiencing a rise in homelessness (14% increase since 2010) while national homeless rates have declined by 4% over the past year. We need to end the housing of homeless families in hotels. Please help me send a message to our government leaders that we, the taxpaying citizens of the Commonwealth, want a say as to where our money is being spent. We should not continue to dump more money into a broken system. Let there be an end of improperly using hotels as homes. It is wasting hard earned money on the wrong type of programming.