Massachusetts Committee Hears Sweeping Testimony on Enough Act Anti-Poverty Bills

BOSTON -- May 7, 2026, Massachusetts lawmakers heard hours of testimony backing the Enough Act, a pair of bills that would create a statewide neighborhood-based anti-poverty grant fund. The Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses, co-chaired by Representative Andres X. Vargas and Senator Adam Gómez, took testimony from more than two dozen organizations at Wednesday's session, the committee's final hearing of the session, on House Bill 5187 and Senate Bill 3022, sponsored by Senator Sal DiDomenico and Representatives Kate Lipper-Garabedian and Antonio Cabral. Jeffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, argued that incarceration in New York City now costs more than $500,000 per person per year, dwarfing the proposed investment, while Maryland's similar law distributed $13.1 million to 27 community groups in its first year. The Boston College Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children told the committee that its City Connects model served 21,793 students last year, connecting them to 242,599 services at a cost of roughly $25,000 per school annually. Advocates from Springfield noted 13 census tracts in that city carry poverty rates above 40 percent, among the highest concentrations of any U.S. city of comparable size, and called the state's current siloed funding approach a waste of scarce resources.