STATE LEADERS continued to struggle this week to balance the commitment to sheltering homeless families with fiscal concerns about runaway costs.  

The issue landed on Wednesday in the Senate, which signed off on $425 million in funding for emergency assistance shelter services. The supplemental spending bill approved by senators largely echoes a version passed last week by the House, imposing new limits on shelter stays and rules for screening applicants.  

The 33-6 vote was almost entirely along party lines in the overwhelmingly Democratic chamber, with the five Republican members joined by one Democrat, John Velis of Westfield, in opposing the bill.  

Massachusetts legislators have merely “shifted the problem” by funding the system through the end of June, said Republican lawmakers, who maintained that proposals to tighten eligibility and screening for shelter assistance don’t go far enough. 

A House-Senate conference committee will now sit down to work out the differences between the two versions of the shelter funding bill before sending it to the governor. 

With the state’s shelter system out of money, the bill would add funding to operate the system though the end of the state’s fiscal year on June 30.  

The bill reduces the maximum length of a shelter stay from nine consecutive months to six consecutive months and caps system capacity at 4,000 families from 6,000 starting December 31, 2025. According to the state website, there were 5,814 families living in shelters as of February 13.  

It also proposes stricter eligibility for stays and would require the Executive Office and Housing and Livable Communities to carry out criminal background checks for shelter applicants.  

The emergency assistance shelter system has been overwhelmed by an influx of migrants and a rise of homelessness in the state. Senate Ways and Means Committee chair Michael Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat, said during Wednesday’s debate that the state’s shelter system continues to be on “an unsustainable trajectory.” 

The Senate bill is similar to the House plan but proposes creating a waitlist for shelter applicants who could be eligible but “need additional time to obtain any third-party verifications reasonably required by the executive office.”  

Sen. Kelly Dooner, Republican of Taunton, said the bill doesn’t get the state closer to a long-term plan for the shelter system.  

“One of the primary reasons I voted against the supplemental budget is because it does not offer a clean and sustainable plan for managing shelter capacity or transition families out of the system,” she said in a statement to CommonWealth Beacon.” Without a comprehensive, long-term strategy, we risk further instability for families in need.”    

Senators said one reason to shrink capacity in the shelter system is to get families out of state-funded stays in hotels and motels.  

However, Sen. Peter Durant, a Spencer Republican, said that reducing the number of families in the system does not necessarily lead to savings for taxpayers because families can get moved to the state-funded HomeBASE program. The program helps families eligible for shelter find stable housing by providing up to $30,000 over a two-year period to help pay for rent, furniture, and moving expenses.  

“You haven’t solved the problem, you’ve just shifted the problem,” Durant said. “You have this permanent housing, which is good because we get people out of the hotels, but you haven’t solved the problem. And the problem of course is that it’s costing the taxpayers over a billion dollars a year.”  

The Senate bill does not directly address the state’s right-to-shelter law, the only one of its kind in the nation that guarantees shelter for homeless families and pregnant women. 

“The responsibility rests with us to ensure the shelter law remains viable with shelter options for families in need,” Rodrigues said. “While we act today on the immediate issue of emergency family shelter, our work in this space is not done.” 

Separately, the Healey administration announced $158 million for affordable housing projects across the state Thursday. The 14 projects in 12 communities, which will lead to the production or preservation of 1,138 housing units, show that the administration is “refusing to kick the can down the road” regarding the state housing crisis, Healey said in a statement.  

 Maya Mitchell is a student in the Boston University Statehouse Reporting program.