The Bay State will continue its “compassionate” policy of providing shelter to families in need, according to one of the state’s budget authors, but that doesn’t mean the migrant crisis facing the commonwealth can be funded by Massachusetts taxpayers forever.

Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues said that the state needs help from the federal government to meet the challenge presented by their border policies, but that in the interim Massachusetts should maintain its right-to-shelter status while slowly ramping down the level of appropriation made available to pay for it all.

“This crisis was created by the federal government,” Rodrigues told WCVB. “We’re holding the bag to fund this issue. We are going to be compassionate, we are not going to let families, women and children, sleep on the streets. That’s not what Massachusetts is all about. But, all this influx of these newly arrived immigrants seeking asylum, they’re here because the federal government opened the door.”

The senator representing the First Bristol and Plymouth District said a bill currently under negotiations in a joint committee would hopefully draw down the level of funding available for the shelter system to a more manageable level.

“I want to ensure in this bill that we create a glidepath — a pathway — to a sustainable budget issue going forward,” he said.

The state’s emergency shelter system has been filled to bursting for months, as tens of thousands of asylum seekers make their way into the Bay State, where they can find assistance in housing their families. So many new arrivals have come to Massachusetts, which is alone among the 50 states in guaranteeing a right to shelter for pregnant women and families with small children, that Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency existed across the commonwealth last August.

According to information provided by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, there are currently 7,504 families enrolled in the Emergency Assistance shelter system. Rodrigues said he didn’t have the exact number of people enrolled in front of him, but acknowledged it might be upwards of 20,000 individuals.

Housing so many people is currently costing the state $75 million per month, or about $50 million more than it normally would.  Rodrigues says that the senate funding proposal would see that amount come out of the state’s Transitional Escrow account at that level for the rest of the fiscal year and then drop each quarter starting in the next fiscal year. The cuts would continue for the next 15 months until the appropriation is down to $35 million per month.

“We don’t shut the spigot off overnight,” he said.

That gives the governor the time and the warning, the chairman said, to “manage it, and figure it out.”

The Healey administration has projected it will spend $932 million this fiscal year and $915 million next fiscal year on Emergency Assistance shelters. In years past, normal emergency shelter capacity hovered around 4,100 families and cost taxpayers about $27 million per month. About half of the families currently in shelter are migrant families who are in the country legally while awaiting the results of their claim to asylum.

According to estimates he provided his senate colleagues when funding for the shelter system was up for debate in March, Rodrigues said it costs the state about $10,000 per month to keep a family in Emergency Assistance shelter.