DAILY WE READ about the homelessness emergency affecting our state and how the high cost of housing, lack of affordable units, and influx of homeless and migrant families has created the perfect storm. We read about our state’s right to shelter law, which guarantees shelter for pregnant women and people with children, and everything our state is doing to meet the unprecedented need.

Outside these headlines are the more than 6,500 individuals–adults without children–experiencing homelessness in Massachusetts. Individuals are not included under the right to shelter. Because the services, physical spaces, and logistics differ greatly, shelters for individuals and families are treated and funded separately. Emergency measures being taken to honor our state’s right to shelter commitment will not help our individual homeless.

Demand for shelter for adults without children over the past year has soared. On average, our shelters have seen a 24 percent increase. On top of our state’s housing crisis, we face a youth mental health emergency, a large aging population, opioid addiction, and health disparities at an all-time high.

Fortunately, the system for addressing individual homelessness in Massachusetts is strong. Our network of emergency shelter, transitional, and supportive housing programs have helped Massachusetts achieve some of the lowest street counts of unsheltered individuals in the country. According to annual data released by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, despite extreme demands on our system over the past 15 years Massachusetts has succeeded in decreasing individual homelessness. When it is fully funded, our system works.

For individuals, emergency shelter is the entry point to healthy, stable living. They gain access to food, healthcare, workforce training, and other wrap-around services to support their long-term stability. Cities and states that haven’t made investments in a comprehensive system to move people from the street to housing face social challenges we have so far avoided.

But we are starting to see the cracks. As our shelters operate well above capacity, towns across our state are reporting growing numbers of individual homeless: teens in Chicopee, college students on the Outer Cape, encampments in the woods of Northampton, and more.

Just as families have a right to shelter, shelter for individuals is equally critical to the safety and well-being of every community across the Commonwealth. Our elected officials have a set of difficult budget choices before them, but shelter for individuals must be fully funded. We cannot let this critical piece of the safety net–one that we know works–falter.

Lyndia Downie is the president and executive director of the Pine Street Inn, Susan Gentili is president of the South Middlesex Opportunity Council, Karen LaFrazia is president of St. Francis House, Heidi Nelson is the CEO of the Duffy Health Center in Hyannis, and John Yazwinski is president and CEO of Father Bill’s & Mainspring.