BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey’s administration plans to pause some rental assistance to families receiving benefits through the HomeBase program after total caseloads increased by more than fivefold between 2023 and 2025, according to state officials and data released to the Herald.

The spike in demand for HomeBase — a program that provides eligible families in the state-run shelter system with $30,000 over two years, with the possibility of a third year of help — lines up with a surge of families entering emergency shelters over the past two and a half years.

Housing Secretary Ed Augustus said the pause on all approvals for the third year of HomeBase support will start July 1 and allow the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to focus on the most families relative to limited resources.

“We are announcing new changes to the HomeBASE program that will reduce costs and make sure HomeBASE can continue to help families with the greatest need,” the former Worcester city manager said in a statement shared first with the Herald.

HomeBase is a rapid-rehousing program that provides financial assistance to families who are eligible for, or enrolled in, the state-run emergency assistance family shelter program. The cash handed to families can be used to help pay for rent, moving costs, brokers’ fees, or utility debt.

Before receiving HomeBase assistance, people must secure their own lease and are required to contribute at least 30% of their income towards rent. That is different from emergency shelter, which provides free temporary housing to homeless families with children and pregnant women.

Augustus said officials also plan to implement “more consistent annual income checks” to ensure families are still eligible for HomeBase and “modernize” data collection to better understand how people are leaving the program and target services that better help families.

The number of families actively receiving benefits through HomeBase has fluctuated over time, and caseloads often coincide with the population of the emergency shelter system.

Since Healey took office in January 2023, the total caseload for HomeBase has increased from 1,473 families to 7,767 in April 2025, according to data released to the Herald this week through a public records request that was initially filed at the start of May.

The more than 500% spike matches up with a surge in demand for emergency shelter driven by an influx of migrants to Massachusetts over the same period.

Brian Shortsleeve, a Republican running for governor who also received HomeBase data through a separate public records request, said Healey “has not been honest with taxpayers about the true costs of her migrant crisis, which we now learn go beyond just migrant hotels to actual rent payments that can last not for months, but for years.”

“She is playing a shell game that is not only costing billions in tax dollars, but contributing to the exploding cost of housing for our people. As governor, I’ll return these programs to their intended purpose — to assist legal Massachusetts residents struggling to get by,” he said in a statement to the Herald.

A spokesperson for Healey’s office declined to comment on Shortsleeve’s criticism.

Emergency shelter and HomeBase costs are regularly disclosed in biweekly reports available to the public. In the past year, Healey has implemented major restrictions on who can access emergency shelter, including some residency requirements that block out migrants.

As shelter caseloads skyrocketed during the summer and fall of 2023, the number of families receiving HomeBase started to inch upwards, according to data provided to the Herald.

But it was not until the summer of 2024 — when the shelter system had already been at max capacity for months — that HomeBase caseloads started to increase at a higher rate.

In January 2024, there were 2,496 families receiving HomeBase services, with only 35% receiving direct rental payments, according to the data. By January 2025, caseloads had grown to 6,619 families in the program, with 54% receiving direct rental payments, the data showed.

The program grew to 7,767 families in April, with 55% of families receiving direct rental payments, according to the data.

A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said HomeBase has since surged to 9,059 families as of the end of June, with 5,154 receiving rental assistance.

And since January 2023, 11,300 families have exited emergency assistance shelter, of which 50% used HomeBase to help them pay for housing, the spokesperson said.

State housing officials argue that the initial HomeBase caseload when Healey took office in January 2023 was artificially low because Massachusetts had kept a pandemic-era eviction moratorium in place until March 2022, or months after a similar federal policy had ended.

The low starting point when Healey took office, housing officials said, made for a more dramatic increase over the following years that was exacerbated by the overwhelming number of families applying for emergency assistance shelter.

Augustus said the Healey administration “inherited a surge in families and an emergency shelter system that was not equipped to handle it.”

“It’s why we reformed the right-to-shelter law, implemented a residency requirement, capped the number of people in the system, limited the length of stay, and conducted criminal background checks on everyone in our system. Now, costs are going down, we are closing all hotels, and the number of families in EA shelter is below the level when we first took office,” he said.

As HomeBase caseloads were increasing in 2023 and 2024, the amount of money the Healey administration was spending on the program each month was steadily climbing.

State officials spent an average of $2 million a month on HomeBase in fiscal year 2024 for a total of $24.8 million, according to a Herald analysis of monthly spending data released through the public records request.

Spending spiked this fiscal year, with monthly averages between July 2024 and May 2025 clocking in at $7.8 million for a total of $86.3 million for the 11-month span, an analysis of the data showed.

The Healey administration has so far spent $97.3 million in fiscal year 2025 on HomeBase, according to data updated last week. The first-term Democrat has shelled out nearly $830 million on the emergency shelter system this fiscal year, state data shows.

Mike Kennealy, another Republican running for governor, said Healey “has never sought to resolve the migrant crisis — she’s only ever sought to resolve her own political problems to get herself out of the headlines.”

“Every action she’s taken has been designed to shield herself from accountability, not to solve the crisis. Her use of the HomeBASE program to hide the true scale and cost of this disaster is nothing short of egregious,” he said in a statement. “It’s a deliberate attempt to deceive the public while the crisis continues to spiral. Massachusetts deserves real solutions — not political cover-ups.”

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