State officials will close all 32 hotels housing families in the emergency shelter system this summer, Governor Maura Healey announced Monday.

Healey had previously directed the hotels to close by the end of 2025, but said in a statement that the plan is now six months "ahead of schedule."

"A hotel is no place to raise a family, and they are the least cost effective," Healey said in a statement. "That's why we implemented reforms to lower caseloads and the cost of the shelter system."

Starting in 2022, mounting numbers of migrant families arriving in Massachusetts forced the state to turn to hotels and motels for space. Since Healey took office in January 2023, officials drastically expanded its emergency shelter system to house thousands of homeless and migrant families fleeing political strife, street violence, and economic collapse in their home countries.

In August 2023, Healey declared the shelter system to be in a state of emergency. At the time, the state was spending $45 million a month on programs to help families eligible for emergency assistance. More than 20,000 individuals were living in state shelter, including children and pregnant women.

According to recent tallies, the total number of families in shelter dropped below 5,000 for the first time since July 2023 and is expected to drop below 4,000 families this summer. There are now only 32 hotels housing families in the state, down from 100 in the summer of 2023.

The shelter population decline is partially a response to the slew of requirements Healey's administration implemented on the system, including rules that require homeless families prove lawful immigration status, show they have lived in the state for at least six months, and undergo full criminal background checks. Healey also capped the system at 7,500 families and, later, supported bringing the number down to 4,000 by the end of 2025.

The changes have dramatically reshaped the state's unique and decades-old right-to-shelter law, which originally guaranteed shelter to families or pregnant women. In introducing the changes, Healey said the measure's "original intent" was not to cover the "waves and waves of people," including migrant families, who have come in recent years.

Senate budget chief Michael Rodrigues, who led the charge to fund the shelter system while imposing Healey-recommended restrictions, applauded the administration Monday.

"Kudos to the administration," the Westport Democrat said. "We were expecting to stop using hotels for shelter sometime by the end of the calendar year, not by the end of summer. That's good"

But there is still a need for shelter, data shows.

According to numbers released by the state housing office Monday, 570 families applied for shelter in the last two weeks; 97 of those families were placed in the system. The average time a family spends in shelter remains long, at more than a year.

Advocates say that while the numbers in shelters have decreased, the needs of homeless families still "remain high" amid the high costs of stable housing.

"We certainly haven't tackled the causes of homelessness," said Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. "As the state takes down infrastructure, we want to make sure that we're in a position to add units as they're needed, and hopefully as we undo some of the draconian restrictions . . . that are keeping many children and parents in places not meant for human habitation."

Samantha J. Gross can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @samanthajgross.