Mike Kennealy, a Republican running for governor, said he personally warned Gov. Maura Healey about rising demand for state-run shelter services during a November 2022 meeting, months before a spike in caseloads brought the emergency program to a breaking point.

The meeting resurfaced a day after the State Auditor’s Office released an audit that accused Healey’s top housing deputies of failing to “adequately assess and act upon” increasing shelter caseloads during the early days of a crisis spurred by an influx of migrants to Massachusetts.

Kennealy, who served as housing and economic development secretary under Gov. Charlie Baker, said “nothing really happened” after he offered the heads-up to Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll during a meeting inside the Attorney General’s Office the afternoon of Nov. 29, 2022.

“Her claim that no one could have seen this crisis coming, I think, is absurd. I mean, I warned her directly,” Kennealy said. “The warning signs were everywhere. I think, for whatever reason, they chose to ignore them.”

A spokesperson for the governor said Healey “inherited” a shelter system that was not equipped to handle the surge in families seeking housing that began in 2022.

“Gov. Healey is the one who reformed the right to shelter law to implement a residency requirement, limited the length of stay, and required CORI checks. Gov. Healey is the one who is getting families out of hotels, lowering caseload, and lowering costs,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

DiZoglio’s audit, which alleged Healey approved “improper and unlawful” no-bid contracts, has sparked a debate over whether the governor’s team missed warning signs of an incoming swell of migrant arrivals and the escalating need for family shelter space.

In a letter responding to DiZoglio’s report, Healey’s top housing deputy, Secretary Ed Augustus, argued that few people could have predicted a “once in a lifetime surge in shelter demand.”

“(The administration) strongly rejects the suggestion that it should have foreseen what was, in fact, a historically unprecedented increase in demand for emergency assistance shelter services driven by international and national forces far beyond EOHLC’s control,” Augustus said.

But Kennealy contends that Healey and Driscoll at least “understood” his warning during the 2022 meeting.

“This was not something unforeseen. It’s not something that happened all at once. It’s something where it was on a trend line, right, and there was ample warning about it,” he said.

A source familiar with Healey’s transition discussions said Kennealy’s advice to the incoming administration focused only on increased funding to support expanded shelter capacity.

“Right-to-shelter and any other reforms were never mentioned,” the source said, referring to the decades-old statute that requires the state to provide shelter to homeless families with children and pregnant women.

Logan Trupiano, a spokesperson for Kennealy, said the Healey administration is in “full-blown damage control in the wake of this audit.”

“It’s no surprise they’ve conveniently ‘forgotten’ the specifics of the conversation and are attempting to deflect responsibility,” Trupiano said. “Top Democrats in the Legislature publicly stated they would not work with the Baker administration on a fix — they would only work with incoming Gov. Maura Healey. Apparently, the Democrats on Beacon Hill forgot to follow through.”

The meeting between Kenneally, Healey, and Driscoll came during the transition between the Baker and Healey administrations and was part of a series of sit-downs Healey had with Baker’s outgoing cabinet secretaries to learn about their work.

It also took place as Baker was unsuccessfully trying to persuade Beacon Hill Democrats to approve millions in extra funding for the emergency shelter program amid a surge of families arriving in Massachusetts from Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela, and Ukraine.

Days before the sit-down between Kennealy and Healey, Baker filed a $139 million spending bill that sought to bring new shelter units online and cover the projected increase in the emergency assistance program through the end of fiscal year 2023.

Kennealy, the then-secretary of housing and economic development, also tried to convince lawmakers to pass the bill in a Dec. 28, 2022 letter to budget chiefs Rep. Aaron Michlewitz of the North End and Sen. Michael Rodrigues of Westport.

In the letter, Kennealy said that officials started ramping up the emergency assistance program in August 2022, including by establishing additional shelter space at Salem State University, a temporary intake site on state-owned land at Devens, and placing families in hotels and motels.

But money to keep expanding the shelter system would run out in 90 days, and the administration would be forced to operate only the existing network of 3,500 units, Kennealy and then-Housing and Community Development Undersecretary Jennifer Maddox said in the letter.

“Without adequate appropriations to expand capacity, it is probable that the EA system will be unable to accommodate families who otherwise would be forced to remain in unsafe situations or sleep in cars, emergency rooms, or other places not intended for human habitation,” the two said in the letter.

Lawmakers never advanced the legislation to Baker’s desk in the final days of the 2021-2022 legislative term. But months later, Beacon Hill Democrats approved a similar spending bill from Healey that included millions for the emergency shelter program.

Healey herself acknowledged that demand for emergency shelter for “significantly increased, and the emergency temporary shelter system is at capacity” in a letter to lawmakers sent Jan. 30, 2023, or only weeks after she took office.

“While the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) has been working to place vulnerable people and expanding capacity to meet its revised caseload projections, emergency assistance funds have been depleted. As a right to shelter state, the commonwealth is committed to providing safe temporary shelter to these families,” Healey said.

Mike Kennealy (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald)