BOSTON — A commission tasked with considering the structure and sustainability of the state’s beleaguered emergency family shelter system is up against a quickly approaching deadline, with still broad disagreement amongst its members about what exactly is at the core of the state’s right-to-shelter law.

The commission was established in a supplemental budget passed in April that also injected $251 million more into the shelter system and established new time limits on how long families can stay in the state-supported housing.

The members have to turn in a report by Dec. 1 with their recommendations to improve the sustainability and effectiveness of the Emergency Assistance (EA) program, review safety practices at overflow sites and create a region-based response to support families in need of shelter.

“We are short on time. I want to be clear. This commission’s report is due in December, and I don’t think we’re going to have this completely figured out and solve it, but we’re hoping to really be running down a lane that folks can kind of get behind as we work on the current implementation challenges and opportunities that we have,” commission Chair Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said at a Monday meeting.

Special commissions are often created by the Legislature when lawmakers are unable to agree on a policy shifts. Oftentimes, the panels themselves disband without coming to an agreement themselves.

The shelter system has been in crisis over the past two years as it has strained under the weight of new arrivals to the country and long-term Massachusetts residents who have had trouble leaving the system, but Driscoll said she sees the commission as an opportunity to not just address the immediate surge in family homelessness but to reform the Emergency Assistance program at large, which she said was already fraught with issues prior to the swell of immigration.

She added that the commission is also considering how to be able to adjust the system’s size when necessary — how to expand it when there is more demand, but shrink it down and save money when there is less.

The Healey administration has enacted tighter restrictions on the family shelters over the past year in an effort to rein in spending that topped $1 billion in fiscal year 2024 and overburdened shelter providers and other resources. More and more families, as a result, have turned to sleeping on the streets and other public spaces.

More than a dozen activists came to the commission’s Monday meeting, where they held signs at eye level with Driscoll, Housing Secretary Ed Augustus, Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh, and Emergency Assistance Incident Command Deputy Director Adit Basheer. Activists also held a rally at the Embrace statue in the Boston Common later Monday afternoon in solidarity with families experiencing homelessness, and against the Healey administration’s shelter restrictions.

“I think it’s very striking that no families who have been directly impacted by homelessness and participate in the system are centered in the meeting,” Kelly Turley, of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, said after the commission meeting Monday.

Driscoll said the next step toward completing their report is meeting with different stakeholder groups, and recommended meeting with providers, community-based organizations and advocates, and municipalities.

Leah Bradley, CEO of the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance, told Driscoll she also believed that families actually in the system should be consulted in the process.

Democrat Sen. Robyn Kennedy, chair of the Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities, was critical of restrictions on the family shelter system. Kennedy said as the commission reimagines the shelter system, she encourages members to “be willing to think very differently about how we approach this whole model of delivering all the services, not just EA.” This includes other housing services like HomeBASE, Residential Assistance for Families in Transition, the rental voucher program — and to think of all of them as linked together, she said.

“They actually, again, not only are better for families, but they actually save the commonwealth money in the long run versus trying to limit access,” she said.

However, while the progressive senator from Worcester was encouraging a more holistic framework, a Republican representative on the commission was pushing for members to use their power to reexamine who, exactly, the right to shelter applies to.

For years, Republicans have argued the 1983 law that created Massachusetts’ right to shelter was only intended for long-term residents — not recent immigrants, some of whom come to Massachusetts because they’ve heard of its expansive social services.

“We need to do a dramatic change, and in that right-to-shelter law in making sure that we are taking care of those folks who have been in Massachusetts for a long period of time, and have to reexamine people who come from out of the state — from wherever out of the state, Tennessee or coming across the border in Texas — that when they’re coming here, what they’re eligible for on day one probably has to be reexamined,” Rep. Paul Frost said.

Frost said he was worried about migrant or short-term families leaving shelters and competing with Massachusetts residents for stable housing or state-run services.

“I understand what you’re asking us, and I think we welcome that conversation with everybody here and others,” Driscoll said.

Ruthzee Louijeune, president of the Boston City Council, spoke at the rally on Monday. Prior to speaking, she told State House News Service that she hopes the commission will focus on finding “a more humane policy.”

“People do not want to be in shelters. They want to find solutions,” she said. “We are a country of immigrants, we’ve had this shelter law on the books, and it’s been one that’s protected young kids and families, and no one can be happy with what they see when we see young kids sleeping outdoors when they should be at school or out of harm’s way.”

Driscoll said in the meeting that one thing the commission is considering is the length of stay policy. The Healey administration began instituting a nine-month limit this spring.

“It isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all system. Length-of-stay policies — how is our length-of-stay policy helping or hurting families that might find themselves in EA shelter?” she said.

Andrea Park of Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, an advocate who has been working to organize against shelter restrictions, said she appreciates the sentiment around fitting specific families’ needs, but that it strikes less true when the administration is simultaneously instituting restrictions.

“The intensive case management is something that people who have been in shelter for a long time have needed for years, and that is where we should be focused on,” she said. “I appreciate the concern about a one-size-fits-all approach, but I worry we’re not all trying to address the same issues. As Sen. Kennedy said, putting restrictions on access is not the way to get people into sustainable housing.”