A 30-member panel is recommending that the state spend $10 million to help the homeless and those at risk of losing their homes.

The Commission to End Homelessness recommends that the money be used to establish a pool of flexible resources. A portion of the funding would be used to develop and test a uniform assessment tool to ensure that existing resources are targeted to meet the needs of the homeless. The funding also would be used to help regional entities coordinate services and develop an early warning system to prevent homelessness.

The commission, led by Undersecretary of Housing and Community Development Tina Brooks and Rep. Byron Rushing, released a five-year housing plan last Friday.

“The $10 million is essentially a first piece of an investment in ending homelessness. One of things that we have discovered is that we will have a considerable amount of money to pay for housing and services Â… from the money we save when shelters are closed,” said Rushing.

The state spends at a minimum $120 million on shelters, Rushing added. “If we could use that money to spend on housing and prevention, we would be close to supplying the housing that we need through vouchers and also in programs,” he said.

Brooks said the state’s standard response to homelessness has been emergency shelter.

“One of the problems with the current system is the only response we have to homelessness is the shelter system,” she said.

“The fundamental shift is to recognize that shelter is just warehousing homeless people. It’s not doing anything to get people out of the conditions so that they’re no longer homeless,” she said. “We need to introduce a system that actually eliminates homelessness by addressing the underlying needs.”

Part of the initial investment would be used to immediately connect those who are at risk of becoming homeless to existing housing and services. That’s where the early warning system would help. The commission wants that system to be designed in the next few months and have it functioning by the start of the next fiscal year, which begins in July.

“What’s happening now is that by the time we know they are at risk, there’s very little we’re doing and they end up at the shelter door,” said Rushing.

The commission didn’t make budget recommendations or advocate for expanding existing programs such as the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program, which provides subsidies to low-income tenants.

“We wanted to recommend the principles that were captured by all the best programs,” Brooks said. “The [Massachusetts Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness] can determine the appropriate response region by region.”

That council, which includes leaders of various state agencies, will have to implement the recommendations, and determine specific budget and program guidelines.

‘A Good Start’

Department of Transitional Assistance Commissioner Julia Kehoe said the emphasis of the commission was to transform the shelter system so it becomes what it was intended to be: “emergency shelter rather than an ad hoc housing system.”

“The whole philosophy behind [the plan] is that we’re trying to get the right sources to the right people at the right time,” said Kehoe, a member of the commission.

DTA supports more than 2,900 shelter beds for individuals and nearly 1,900 for families. An estimated 24,000 adults and 5,000 families are homeless in Massachusetts, according to the commission’s report.

Kehoe said the commission recognized that different types of housing initiatives would work in different regions of the state and with different populations.

When the commission started meeting, many members were saying the way to solve homelessness was to produce more affordable units, Brooks noted. But the group soon recognized that affordable housing production wasn’t the sole answer, she said.

The commission report says the state has the capacity to produce up to 1,800 new housing units over the next five years. A total of 200 new units for individuals, or single-person occupancy units, could be produced annually for the next five years.

According to the commission, 500 private housing units and 300 new public housing units can be developed for low-income families during the same period.

“Broadly, it’s a good start, but clearly we still have a lot of work ahead of us with the Massachusetts Interagency Council to ensure that we have any hope of reducing chronic homelessness or the state’s reliance on emergency shelter,” said Joe Finn, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance.