Gov. Maura Healey’s administration has spent more than $700 million this fiscal year on taxpayer-funded shelters housing migrants and local families, even as the number of households in shelter dropped below 5,000 last week, according to public data.

The total amount the Healey administration has spent on the emergency assistance program through last week is still short of the $1 billion projection for the fiscal year that ends July 1. But the cash shuttled to shelters through mid-April is still far above historical norms.

In a statement last week after the shelter caseload fell below 5,000 households, Healey said her administration has taken “decisive action to reduce the number of families in shelter and lower the cost of the system.”

“We’re getting results,” she said. “We have already reduced the use of costly hotels by more than half.”

A majority of the money spent this fiscal year, or $537 million, has been used for direct shelter payments to house homeless families with children and pregnant women under the state’s decades-old right-to-shelter law, according to the data last updated April 17.

The Healey administration has spent another $77 million in fiscal year 2025 on HomeBASE, a program that helps people in shelters find stable housing by subsidising their first and last month’s rent, security deposit, broker’s fee, and monthly rent payments for up to two years.

State officials have also shelled out $44 million on overflow shelter operations and clinical and safety risk screening sites, the state data showed.

Other top expenditures so far this year include $12 million on educational aid, $8 million to pay National Guard members serving the shelter system, and $6 million for “shelter support services,” according to the data.

Healey’s budget writers have not yet released a spending projection for fiscal year 2026.

“Fiscal year 2026 spending is currently being evaluated given the recently signed supplemental budget. This number will be updated pending conclusion of that evaluation,” officials said in a report released Tuesday, referring to a bill that imposed new rules on shelter access.

But even as Healey has not yet said how much she expects to spend next fiscal year, House Democrats proposed shuttling $275 million to the system in their fiscal year 2026 state budget proposal, or $50 million less than the governor pitched in January.

House budget chief Aaron Michlewitz did not say last week whether that figure would cover all shelter expenses next fiscal year.

“If we have to come back and reevaluate, we will,” he said.

The number of families in the emergency assistance shelter program peaked at 7,625 households — or tens of thousands of people — at the end of July 2024, according to state data.

Caseloads have since fallen by more than 35% to 4,935 families as of April 17, state data shows. Many families have left the shelter system for other housing options, including the state-funded HomeBASE program.

The decline of the shelter population comes after Healey and the Legislature approved new restrictions on the system.

That includes barring anyone from the program who is not lawfully present in the United States with some exceptions, cutting down the maximum length of stay to six months, and requiring the Healey administration to reduce the number of families in shelters to 4,000 starting in December.