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The state budget line item for a safety net rental voucher program has grown significantly in recent years, but housing advocates say Gov. Maura Healey’s proposal to boost it an additional 16 percent in fiscal 2026 only keeps up with inflation due to sky-high housing prices.

The governor proposed funding the Mass. Rental Voucher Program, which offers rental assistance to low-income families, at $253 million in fiscal year 2026, up from $219 million this year.

There’s a long waiting list for vouchers, which housing advocates say are a critical and underfunded piece of the safety-net system. But state spending on vouchers has struggled to keep up with housing inflation.

In the fiscal 2023 state budget, lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Baker appropriated about $154 million toward MRVP, which covered about 9,000 vouchers. With a $253 million allocation, the Healey administration estimates it can support just over 11,000 because the cost per voucher has risen along with growing rents.

Michael Kane, executive director of the Mass. Alliance of HUD Tenants, said Healey’s proposal would essentially level-fund the program without making new vouchers available to the 160,000-person waitlist. There would be a slight increase of about 150 project-based vouchers that were previously awarded but beginning to come online through fiscal 2026, according to the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

To be eligible for MRVP, a household needs to earn less than 80 percent of the median income in their area, though researchers in a 2022 study said typical recipients in fact earn less than 30 percent of area median income.

“These are extremely low-income people on the waitlist, often paying 40 percent or 50 percent of their income on rent. And that’s not sustainable, that’s where homelessness comes from,” Kane said.

In that study, analysts found that about 585,000 Massachusetts households qualified for rental assistance based on their incomes, but only about 250,000 received any of a range of available benefits including federal Section 8 vouchers, state and federal public housing, and sub-market housing production.

Mass. Alliance of HUD Tenants is part of a coalition of a housing advocacy groups asking for the state to invest $300 million in MRVP in fiscal 2026, which would represent a 37 percent increase over this year’s allocation.

Along with 2Life Communities, Haley House, Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, CHAPA, The Boston Foundation and others, the alliance will be on Beacon Hill on Wednesday lobbying lawmakers for the spending increase, as well as legislation to codify the program into law (HD.2020 / S.1008).

“We’ll be back every year looking for an expansion,” Kane said, adding that with federal funding cuts looming for Section 8 federal rental vouchers, the state program is about to become even more important.

Last year, Healey and Legislature agreed to a 22 percent boost to MRVP. It brought 900 new vouchers online.

“Ensuring strong investment in the Mass. Rental Voucher Program is an important step in the administration’s effort to keep people securely housed in the units during a time when housing inflation is increasing across the country,” Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Ed Augustus told lawmakers during a budget hearing on Monday in Gloucester.

In response to increased rents, EOHLC recently started using a new payment standard for its mobile voucher program — which can travel with tenants to new units. The office now uses zip-code level data, rather than metro-area market data, to make vouchers more competitive in expensive markets.

Sen. Jake Oliviera, who chaired Monday’s budget hearing, called the line item “very important.”

“And the hundreds of millions of dollars we invest in that program to try to keep rents down, which have been far outpacing the rate of inflation,” he said. “In fact, in my district and the city of Springfield [to make] the median family rent within the city, you need to earn 120 percent above the median family income, it’s becoming out of reach for many families right now.”

Oliviera asked Augustus how the program could become more sustainable.

The secretary answered: build more.

“Our lower-wage and lower-income residents can’t afford to pay, and that’s why it’s so important that we not only provide the resources for these safety net programs, but that we build more housing, because ultimately, that is really what’s going to take some pressure off this housing market, is creating more units to allow for more vacancy levels,” Augustus said.