by
Judith D. Feins, Ph.D.
Linda B. Fosburg, Ph.D.
This paper describes the provision of emergency shelter and services to homeless persons in the United States. Administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Emergency Shelter Grant (ESG) Program has been helping States and localities provide facilities and services to shelter homeless people but at the same time to aid in their transition from temporary shelter to permanent homes. In large part, this paper grows out of an evaluation of the ESG Program, conducted in 1993, which provides the best description currently available of emergency shelters and homeless services across the United States.
The paper also describes several variations on the ESG program. Many emergency shelters require that clients participate in case management and services. A recent development is the provision of shelter with more flexible requirements. Safe Havens provide a safe and decent alternative to the streets for homeless persons with severe mental illness who need adjustment time before engaging in treatment and other supportive services. Recent interviews conducted by Abt Associates with a range of other emergency shelter organizations reveal that homeless shelters continue to respond to the needs of homeless people by expanding their programs to include a wider spectrum of services. In addition to describing the types of shelter programs found throughout the United States, this paper describes the populations being served, identifies the effective practices in emergency shelter and services, and comments on the future research needs.
This paper describes the provision of emergency shelter and services to homeless persons in the United States. In general, emergency shelters for the homeless provide indoor space with beds and meals to those who have no other place to stay. Common variations of emergency shelters include the night-only shelter (which requires guests to be elsewhere during the day), the day-only shelter (which provides daytime space, meals, and sanitary facilities but not overnight sleeping space), and 24-hour shelters (which can be used by guests around the clock). Different types of shelters may serve different populations. Shelters also vary greatly in size, from fewer than 10 beds to several hundred beds.
In large part, this paper grows out of an evaluation of the Emergency Shelter Grants (ESG) Program, a Federal program that has been an important factor in expanding the quality and quantity of shelter and services since 1986.(2) The ESG evaluation is a major source of quantitative data collected from a representative national sample of emergency shelter providers in 1992. It provides the best description currently available of emergency shelters and homeless services in the United States.(3) In addition, Abt Associates recently interviewed a number of major homeless services providers to update the ESG evaluation's findings.(4)
Other sources of national data include HUD's 1988 National Survey of Shelters for the Homeless and an earlier examination of related federal support for emergency food and shelter. Apart from these, research on emergency shelters has primarily been descriptive, usually based on a single site; the results are therefore not comparable to a national survey.
Since its inception, the focus of the Emergency Shelter Grants (ESG) program, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has been helping States and localities provide facilities and services to meet local needs, to shelter homeless people but at the same time to aid in their transition from temporary shelter to permanent homes. The ESG program was established by Congress through the Homeless Housing Act of 1986, to provide funds for emergency shelters and essential services for the homeless. One year later, it was incorporated into the McKinney Act of 1987 and took its place among an array of programs designed to address the plight of homeless men, women, and children in the United States. It has been a core part of homeless assistance throughout the first decade.
Each year, HUD allocates ESG funding to supplement State, local, and private efforts to improve the number and quality of emergency homeless shelters. The ESG funds may be used for the construction, rehabilitation, or conversion of buildings into homeless shelters, as long as the local agency uses the property as a homeless shelter for a specified time period. ESG grants also may be used for shelter operating expenses and administrative costs.
ESG funds are provided to States, territories,(5) and qualified cities and counties; the States must distribute the funds to local governments or private nonprofit organizations. Local governments must match ESG grants dollar-for-dollar from other sources after the first $100,000. They may administer the grants themselves or distribute the funds to private nonprofit organizations.
Since 1987, ESG funding has helped provide shelter for many homeless persons in need of help.(6) A total of $425.9 million in program funding was distributed nationwide through 1994. But ESG monies typically made up 6 to 10 percent of shelter budgets; the shelters this program supported usually had significant other funding sources. Among the most common other funding sources for emergency shelter were HUD's Community Development Block Grant program and two McKinney programs. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) continues to administer the Emergency Food and Shelter grants,(7) for which Congress appropriated $1,552.1 million between 1987 and 1998. In addition, the Emergency Community Services program of the Department of Health and Human Services distributed $220.4 million in funding from 1987 to 1995.
Apart from assisting in the provision of physical shelter, the ESG program is an important source of funds for essential services for homeless people. Essential services are related social services in areas such as employment, health, drug abuse, and education. Essential services may be provided in a shelter setting, or they may be offered by separate (non-shelter) provider organizations. When they are offered the latter way, linkages must be made between shelter clients and the service providers. An example of a non-shelter service provider is the Larkin Street Youth Center in San Francisco, a drop-in center for youth aged 12 to 23 that operates 12 hours per day but (in 1992) did not operate a night shelter. Its broad range of services includes case management, employment counseling, referral, and a fully equipped medical center.
Among emergency shelters, day-only and 24-hour facilities tended to be the most services-rich. While nearly three-quarters of night-only shelters offered seven or fewer services, almost two-thirds of day shelters and over 40 percent of 24-hour facilities offer between twelve and nineteen services to their clients. ESG funds directly supported a great deal of this service activity.
ESG funding is also used for homelessness prevention: to assist individuals and families at-risk of homelessness in retaining their housing; and to help homeless clients obtain permanent housing. Homelessness prevention is intended to reduce the flow of clients into shelters, as well as aiding those ready to move into more stable living situations. An example of homelessness prevention is the American Red Cross in the San Francisco area. The Bay Area chapter of the American Red Cross coordinates the homelessness prevention allocations for 29 agencies serving the city’s homeless. Their coordination of the pool of funds for prevention ensures that the same criteria for receipt of funds are applied across all agencies.
The ESG program evaluation showed substantial allocations to homelessness prevention; in the 12 months leading up to the study, ESG funds had aided almost 35,000 at-risk individuals and families to retain their housing. However, there are other funding sources and other studies on this topic. It will be addressed in another session of this symposium.
Of all the service providers that received Emergency Shelter Grant funds in 1991, 81.8 percent were shelters, while the remainder were not. The shelters were either day-only facilities (5.6 percent), night-only shelters (9.5 percent), or 24-hour operations (84.9 percent). Of the 24-hour programs, most were open seven days a week.
Among the shelters receiving ESG funding, there were various types of facilities. Approximately 30 percent were dormitory-style shelters, and 47.7 percent were group homes. Smaller numbers of shelters characterized themselves as scattered-single apartments, groups of apartments or apartment buildings, rooms in single-room occupancy (SRO) facilities, or hotels or motels.
Staff sizes for shelter providers are shown in Exhibit 1. Providers operating shelters reported a median of six paid, full-time-equivalent staff and one unpaid (volunteer) staff person working in their organizations. Staffing levels in local government shelters (a mean of 13.5) were similar to those in private nonprofit shelters (a mean of 14.1).
Among non-shelter agencies (providing other services to homeless people), private nonprofits averaged 11.8 full-time staff members while local government agencies averaged just 4.5 staff members. The staffs of these agencies averaged 2.0 unpaid volunteers. Thus, shelter staffs were slightly larger than the staffs of non-shelter service providers, and they had larger numbers of volunteers.
Staffing of Shelter and Non-Shelter ESG Provider Agencies
The overall median number of beds for all shelters receiving ESG funds in 1992 was 26 beds, and the mean was 50. Exhibit 2 shows that the number of beds varied across the different types of shelters. Night-only shelters tended to be larger, with a median of 31.5 beds, while 24-hour shelters had a median of 25 beds. Not surprisingly, day-only shelters had the smallest number of beds, with a median of 10.
A recent development in the provision of shelter services targets homeless persons with mental disabilities. Safe Havens, funded initially as a component of HUD’s Supportive Housing Program in 1994, had 80 funded projects by 1997 (National Resource Center for Homelessness and Mental Illness, 1997). Safe Havens provide a safe and decent alternative to the streets for homeless persons with severe mental illness who need adjustment time before engaging in treatment and other supportive services. These programs are designed as transitional residences, with no specific time limits and low-demands to participate in mental health or substance abuse treatment programs or to receive other supportive services.(9) They generally provide semi-private accommodations with use of a common kitchen, dining rooms, and bathrooms; and basic services plus necessities such as telephones, storage lockers, and mailing address.
In general, Safe Havens deliberately wrap their resources around the needs of the individual, rather than demanding that the individual comply with the requirements of the program. Those served by this program are typically considered too unstable to be served by traditional shelters, or they have been banned from them. As one provider described the approach, “This is a program where you can fall back without falling out of the program” (Fosburg, Locke, Peck, & Finkel, 1997).
Emergency shelter and services for homeless people are provided by a variety of types of organizations, including government agencies and private groups with or without religious affiliation. Providers of all kinds may receive ESG funding to support delivery of these services.(10) However, results from the ESG evaluation indicated that private nonprofit organizations predominated among the agencies actually funded in 1992. Three-quarters of both shelters and non-shelter providers were private nonprofit organizations with no religious affiliation, and an additional 19.8 percent indicated they were nonprofits with a religious affiliation. The remaining 5.4 percent were local government agencies.
Of the small number of local government shelters, 78.0 percent were 24-hour shelters with day programs, 15.5 percent were day-only shelters, and 6.5 percent were night-only facilities. Among the private, nonprofit shelters, 69.4 percent of those with religious affiliations and 89.6 percent of those without religious affiliations were 24-hour facilities.
Most ESG-funded providers were well-established agencies. Just under half of the providers had been operating for eleven years or more (and a few, such as the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the St. Vincent DePaul Society, have over a century of experience). About a third had begun operations between five and ten years before the study was conducted.
The distribution of ESG-funded providers by census region of the country is shown in Exhibit 5. Some 22.4 percent of the providers were located in the Northeast, 33.2 percent were in the South, 24.7 percent in the Midwest and 19.7 percent in the West. The proportion of shelters in each region was roughly the same. Over 60 percent of the local government shelters were located in the East or South regions of the country.
Emergency shelters are not just temporary stopgaps; instead, they are sources of a much wider range of services for homeless persons. Once in a shelter, what specific essential services are clients offered? The ESG program evaluation gathered data on the range of activities of ESG-funded service providers and found that they offered and/or coordinated a considerable variety of services to the homeless. Few, if any, of the shelters fit the conventional image of a bare-bones, dormitory-style, night-only shelter. They were not "three hots and a cot." Instead, they were delivering a surprisingly wide range of services on-site.
Exhibits 3 and 4 show the number of beds in ESG-funded shelters in 1992, compared to the shelter bed capacity estimated in HUD's 1988 National Survey of Shelters for the Homeless.(8) The average bed capacity was approximately the same. However, the proportion of ESG-funded shelters with fewer than 25 beds was slightly higher than the proportion of small shelters estimated by HUD (49 percent of ESG-funded shelters compared to 44 percent in HUD's estimates). The total bed capacity of ESG-funded shelters in 1992 was 108,735, with an average nightly total occupancy of 88,279. HUD's 1988 survey estimated an average nightly occupancy of 180,000 in shelters nationwide. Even assuming some modest increase in the number of available beds between 1988 and 1992, a substantial proportion of the nation's shelter capacity was found in ESG-funded shelters.
Sources: 1988 data from HUD’s 1988 National Survey of Shelters for the Homeless; 1992 data from Provider Phone Survey of 651 ESG-funded providers.
Sources: 1988 data from HUD’s 1988 National Survey of Shelters for the Homeless; 1992 data from Provider Phone Survey of 651 ESG-funded providers.
Exhibit 7 summarizes the services coordinated by all providers and indicates whether the services were funded by ESG, whether the service was provided on-site (rather than at another facility), and whether the service or activity was required for all clients.(11) A factor analysis of the list of services revealed that they were offered and/or coordinated by the providers in four clusters:
In the category of core services, almost 90 percent of all providers offered bed space,(13)while nearly 80 percent offered breakfast and dinner, and just under 70 percent offered lunch. But a full 93.1 percent of the providers indicated that they also directly offered other services to their homeless or near-homeless clients. These essential services fell into the three groups: assistance services; skills development services; and intervention/treatment services.
The most common assistance services (offered by 90 percent or more of the providers) were help in obtaining benefits and finding permanent housing. Also quite common were assistance in daily living skills, transportation, support groups, and job referrals. Nutritional counseling, childcare and clothing were other forms of assistance offered by a substantial proportion of the providers.
Shown on the second page of Exhibit 7 are five skills-development services that were commonly offered, including assistance in GED preparation, vocational counseling, and job training. The fourth cluster, intervention and treatment services, included substance abuse counseling, psychological counseling, and medical care. Detoxification and other forms of drug treatment were the least frequently offered services in the entire list of essential services, but they were still offered by nearly a quarter of the providers.
Recent interviews conducted by Abt Associates with a range of emergency shelter organizations reveal that homeless shelters continue to respond to the needs of the homeless by expanding their programs to include a wider spectrum of services. Shelter providers now see their mission as opening a front door to the Continuum of Care, so that their clients are started on a path toward stable independent living. Consequently, their emphasis is increasingly in the following directions:
Transitional housing services are a component of all the recently interviewed shelter organizations. Transitional housing offers a supported, temporary place of residence before the client finds a more permanent housing situation. This topic is covered in the paper that follows.
Another service many emergency shelters are providing to their clients is skills development programs, which have increased in number and scope since the McKinney Act. Several place an emphasis on domestic preparedness (housekeeping and budgeting) and issues around adulthood and parenting.
Education and employment training are at the forefront of services for the International Union of Gospel Missions (IUGM). Fifty of their shelters have computerized education programs, some of which include an "employment readiness" component. This component is implemented by Worknet, a nonprofit organization working with missions on employment education programs and helping them to establish job training. Due to the lack of affordable housing, the Union Missions find it difficult to find permanent housing situations for clients; as a result, they have placed a greater emphasis on success in job training and placement as well as follow-up after the client has left the emergency shelter. More than 300 employers are connected to this training and job placement program and provide both temporary and permanent employment opportunities. Other shelter organizations, such as the Salvation Army, provide job training in conjunction with local community or county needs. Some of the Salvation Army missions also provide transportation to jobs and to GED classes.
Many emergency shelters have expanded their child care or child services, to assist families—especially single mothers—in maintaining or seeking employment. These programs range from offering daycare services at shelters to helping keep homeless children in their original schools by providing transportation from shelters to school and back. Other shelter providers, such as Catholic Charities of America, have had to decrease childcare services due to a decrease in funding.
Shelters are also doing follow-up work with clients. For example, approximately four years ago, Union Missions began a performance measurement program used by case managers, in which they set goals for clients and themselves. By setting target numbers for achievement in such areas as education, employment and housing, case managers are better able to assist the clients with progressing toward more independent living and track them. In addition, it gives Union Missions a record of work with each client and a way to measure the overall rate of success.
Other programs offered by emergency shelters that are the result of expanded services in the last decade include rehabilitation, conflict resolution, violence prevention, GED courses, youth programs, and assistance for women and children with HIV/AIDS.
The term "case management" refers to the functions required to pull together and provide linkage to the network of supportive services providers who can meet the various needs of homeless persons. The importance of a case manager derives from the understanding that it is extremely difficult for anyone, let alone a homeless person, to negotiate the complex and diffuse supportive services systems that have grown up due to multiple funding sources and different organization objectives. The most frequently identified functions of a case manager are assessment of services needs, development of a services plan, linkage to services, monitoring of services provision, maximizing compliance, and client advocacy.
Over eighty percent of the shelters surveyed in the ESG evaluation offered and even required case management of their clients as a condition of remaining in the shelter or program. Another indication of the trend toward requiring homeless clients to cooperate with the case management process is the fact that case worker assessment was a method used by 82.4 percent of all ESG-funded providers to identify service needs. The role of case managers can vary from place to place. In some instances, they serve as the primary provider of all services for the homeless client. In other instances, their role is confined to coordinating the delivery of needed services.
Nationwide, over half the homeless population is made up of single men. Families make up the next largest segment (about a third of the total). The evaluation of the Emergency Shelter Grants program indicates that service providers vary considerably in the populations they serve. Shelter providers serve different clients from non-shelter providers, and different types of shelters (day-only, night-only, or 24-hour) served different homeless populations, as summarized in Exhibit 8.
The proportion of non-shelter providers indicating that they worked with a particular population was generally higher than the proportion of shelters reporting working with the same population. This implies that the populations served by non-shelter service providers are more diverse, while shelters may have facilities and programs designed for more narrowly targeted groups. The two exceptions to this observation were that the night-only shelters were slightly more likely to serve single men, and that the day-only shelters were significantly more likely to serve single youth.
These exceptions are consistent with the remarks of providers during site visits to the State and local agencies that administer federal emergency shelter funding (the ESG grantees) and to the providers they fund in fifteen locations around the country.(14)
Families, which make up approximately one-third of the homeless population nationally, were the most frequently cited population served by the ESG-funded providers. Eighty-five percent of all providers indicated that they served families, including 82.7 percent of shelters and 95.4 percent of non-shelter providers. Among the shelters, almost all of the day-only and 24-hour shelters served families, while only 57.7 percent of the night-only facilities reported that they could accommodate families.
While single men account for more than half the homeless population nationally, they were only served by about half the ESG-funded shelters. However, about three-quarters of the non-shelter service providers reported offering services to single men. Two-thirds of day-only shelters and 83 percent of night-only shelters worked with single men, while only 38.4 percent of 24-hour shelters provided services to this population. In one place, a shelter ran 24-hours for families, but single men could only be there at night.
Single youth (approximately 4 percent of the homeless population nationally) were the least frequently served population across all types of ESG providers when the research was conducted. Only about one-third of both shelter and non-shelter providers offered services to homeless single youth, and a similar proportion of shelters worked with young people.
Providers also reported whether they work with particular subgroups of the homeless, or with families or individuals with particular characteristics or problems. About half of all providers indicated they offered services to battered women and drug-dependent or alcohol-dependent clients. Between 42 and 45 percent reported working with the elderly, veterans, and the physically disabled, while 37 percent offered services to the chronically mentally ill. HIV- positive clients were served by 39 percent of the providers, and mentally retarded individuals received services from 30 percent of ESG-funded agencies. Children and youth were served by only 23 percent of the providers. Recent interviews indicate a growth in the number of families (especially women with children) served over the past decade. In response, the Salvation Army increased access for women and children to its shelter facilities from 70 to 90 percent.
If emergency shelters are meant to function as a front door to the Continuum of Care, how do homeless people find their way there? The ESG evaluation is a good source for the population as a whole, although there have also been studies that asked this question about special populations.(15) Some combination of four circumstances (living on the street, living with friends/relatives, private rental housing, and emergency shelters) accounted for a substantial proportion of most providers' clients.(16)
The prior residency of the clients of each type of shelter varied widely, as shown in Exhibit 9. Night-only and day-only shelters tended to draw clients from the streets. The 24-hour shelters drew most of the their clients from a combination of the streets, living with friends and relatives, and private rental housing. Non-shelter service providers tended to draw the highest percentage of their clients (21.7 percent) from private rental housing, suggesting that people at risk of homelessness sought help from the non-shelter service providers first. However, the non-shelter providers were also drawing from the streets (16.5 percent), from people living with friends and relatives (16.6 percent), and from emergency shelters (13.9 percent).
According to the providers, clients learned about the services they offered from numerous referral sources, as shown in Exhibit 10. The top four sources of referrals—social service agencies, clergy, friends, and other shelters—were a source of clients for virtually all shelters, regardless of type. Other very common sources included citizens, doctors, police and the courts, public housing agencies, parents, and hot-lines. Detoxification and substance abuse treatment facilities, as well as psychiatric programs and treatment centers, were also important referral sources, suggesting ways that some special populations were linked into the shelter system. The numbers of different referral agents reported by the providers and the substantial percentages reported for many of them underscore the strength of the providers' networks and their reputations in the community.
By and large, the sources of client referrals were similar for all types of shelters, with one exception: the day-only shelters were much more likely to have clients referred to the program by their own outreach workers. Only 22.1 percent of all ESG-funded providers reported that they employed outreach workers to help identify people who might benefit from services. Of those who did, 81.5 percent had their outreach staff contact social service providers, and 66.5 percent contacted local police to identify potential clients. Roughly half contacted public housing agencies, detox or substance abuse treatment facilities, and psychiatric facilities.
In 1992, the ESG program supported organizations that served nearly 4 million individuals and families in a variety of ways, as well as helping prevent loss of housing for some 35,000 households. Almost 28 million days/nights of shelter were provided.(17) Although duplication (multiple counting of an individual or family) is a chronic problem with counting the homeless, the data gathered for the ESG study were closely scrutinized and (based on their consistency with other measures and data sources) appear to have substantial credibility. Overall, the shelters in the ESG study reported an average nightly census of 40 persons over the previous 12 months, or an average of 12,644 shelter days/nights for the year. In the absence of recent systematic data, it is difficult to determine how the number of emergency beds has changed over the past six years.(18) However, one indication of the growth in the number of homeless over the last several years is that the Salvation Army alone provided 6 million emergency bed nights in 1997.
In HUD's 1988 survey of shelters, it appeared there were sometimes mismatches between the type of shelter space available and the type of client needing shelter. HUD's survey findings suggested that spaces were generally available in a jurisdiction's larger homeless shelters, but these facilities generally offered only the "concrete services" of beds and meals. Spaces at smaller facilities that offered more services seemed always to be at a premium.
Shelters in the ESG study reported that, on average, they operated at 78 percent of capacity.(19) Small shelters (those with fewer than 25 beds) reported an average occupancy rate of 72 percent, and medium (25 to 50 beds) and large (more than 50 beds) shelters indicated they operated at 82 percent of capacity, on average. About 5 percent of the shelters reported that their average nightly census exceeded their number of beds: they regularly served more homeless families and individuals than the number for which they had appropriate space.
All the providers interviewed in 1998 indicated their facilities were full to capacity each night. In fact one of them, Catholic Charities of America, reported that emergency services are in such great demand that funding for other programs within the organization has been reduced to accommodate emergency shelter needs. In the ESG study, some 80 percent of providers nationwide indicated that they had turned eligible clients away. The average number of eligible clients turned away in the past 30 days was reported to be 43, with shelter operators reporting an average of 48 turnaways.
What are the reasons clients have been turned away? The ESG evaluation reported the primary reason was that the shelter or program was at capacity. The next three most frequently cited reasons for these providers were security problems (especially in shelters undergoing renovation), an inebriated client, or the wrong type of client.
How long do clients remain in emergency shelters? What factors influence their length of residency? Exhibit 11 presents data from the ESG study on these subjects. Across all the shelters, the mean length of stay was 71 days and the median was 30 days. However, this varied greatly, from a few shelters with mean stays of less than 5 days to a handful reporting average stays over a year. The 24-hour shelters had the longest median stays, at 30 days; the small number of day-only shelters showed great variability in length of stay.(20) But for 95 percent of these agencies, the average duration of residence per client was 9 months or less.
Among the emergency shelters interviewed in 1998, the average length of stay ranged from 10 nights to 9 months. This variation resulted from the different kinds of programs the shelters offered ranging from limited-stay bed use to housing units that could be considered transitional.
In the 1992 survey, shelters reported varying standards on the maximum allowable length of stay (possibly depending on the type of client). About three-quarters of the shelters characterized themselves as short-term shelters, with maximum allowable stays of 90 days or less. Half of the shelters indicated they served as temporary, overnight facilities, while the other half reported they provided long-term, transitional shelter (over 90 days, but with some prescribed limit). Just under 30 percent of the shelters said they served clients with special needs (such as substance abusers) and imposed no limits on length of stay.
A range of factors was identified by shelter providers in the ESG study as influences on length of stay. The three factors most frequently cited by the agencies were:
While the first two factors would affect how soon a client could be ready for transition from the shelter, the third could limit the departure of even the most ready clients. Client financial stability was among the other factors prominently mentioned, as was expiration of the shelter time limit. Although nearly 80 percent of the providers in the study reported turning away eligible clients, availability of services or staffing or funding was not often given as a limiting factor once a homeless person or family was in a shelter.
Effective Practices in Emergency Shelter and Services
In the decade's experience with sheltering homeless individuals and families, a number of practices have proven useful in assisting clients and have been very widely adopted. One of these—the joint provision of shelter and services—is in fact the basis for a number of other practices.
The combining of core services and essential services, described earlier in this paper, occurs in two different ways. One is the on-site provision of services to residents of a shelter by an outside service provider (e.g., a hospital with a clinic on the premises). The other is the offering of services by the same provider that operates the shelter. In either case, many shelter providers have gradually added services, typically on site or nearby, to meet the needs of their clients. Many of the providers surveyed used ESG support to expand existing services and/or to start up new services.
Client needs assessment is widely considered a critical factor in effective service delivery to homeless people. The assessment process serves a number of purposes, including developing a relationship between the staff member and guest and beginning to establish trust, as well as determining the services (and possible outside referrals) that the individual or family needs in order to regain its independence and residential stability.
Providers used a variety of methods to assess the service needs of their clients, as shown in Exhibit 12. Essentially all providers reported using intake interviews, assessments provided by referral agencies, and clients' own evaluation of their needs as ways of assessing clients' needs. There were practically no differences among the various shelter types, except that the day shelters were significantly more likely to offer/use medical examinations and diagnosis to assess the needs of the clients. Another indication of the trend toward requiring homeless clients to cooperate with the case management process is the fact that case worker assessment was used by 82.4 percent of all ESG-funded providers to identify service needs.
Providers’ Methods of Identifying Client Service
Needs by Shelter TypeAnother widespread practice of emergency shelters is the use of rules and requirements to guide and limit clients' behavior while in residence. In the ESG evaluation, querying providers on this topic produced a lengthy list of rules. As shown in Exhibit 13 the most common rules prohibited drinking or drug use (found in 98 percent of the shelter facilities) and forbade weapons possession, stealing, and assault (found in 97 to 98 percent). Ninety-four percent of shelters imposed a curfew on the clients. Other common rules prohibited prostitution and consensual sexual activity. And the rules continue, as shown in the exhibit.
Requirements of participation in certain activities are another common practice, used by shelters to help limit client dependence and end the spell of homelessness. A large proportion of the shelters in the ESG program evaluation had certain requirements that clients had to fulfill, in order to remain in the shelter. The most common requirement reported by shelters in the ESG evaluation was meeting with the caseworker. Overall, 83 percent of the shelters made clients do so, but the proportion was substantially less in day and night-only shelters than in 24-hour ones. Clients also commonly had to actively seek housing (82 percent), enroll and keep their children in school (77 percent), and adhere to a case management plan (75 percent).
Most providers reported that participation in the range of essential services was voluntary rather than required of their clients. However, 30 percent did require clients to take advantage of assistance with daily living skills, and 32 percent required participation in support groups. Most providers offered these additional services on-site, rather than referring clients to other agencies.
Indicators of Effective Coverage of the Homeless
Over time, the State and local agencies that administer federal emergency shelter funding (the ESG grantees) have developed strategies for targeting the unique needs of specific segments of the homeless population. As shown in Exhibit 14, most grantees cite numerous targets for the ESG funding. Nearly all grantees (98.6 percent) indicate that they recognized the needs of homeless families. In keeping with this, most grantees (91.4 percent) have included victims of domestic violence in their strategies. The needs of the chronically mentally ill have been recognized by 72.2 percent of the grantees. The elderly and veterans have been recognized by 52.0 to 56.2 percent of the grantees. Others (homeless youth, migrants, those infected with HIV/AIDS, and substance abusers) have received less recognition in the deliberate development of strategies for addressing the needs of the homeless.
Despite the grantees' identification of particular groups of the homeless for development of strategies to meet their needs, their self-rating of effectiveness (on a scale of one to five) in addressing the needs of the special groups varied. Grantees indicated that their strategies were most effective (mean rating of 4.1) for victims of domestic violence. The next highest rating of the grantees was for their strategies to meet the needs of homeless youth (3.9). Given the general lack of services to this special group, as reported by providers, this grantee opinion is viewed as questionable. What is more probable is the reported effectiveness of the services for homeless families (3.8) and the homeless elderly (3.5).
Future Research Needs for Emergency Shelter and Services
The problem of homelessness—and the challenge of helping homeless people to find stable housing and achieve independent living—are not likely to disappear soon from the United States. The current healthy and buoyant economy has not eliminated the need for emergency shelter and services, and some factors are likely to intensify this need in the short term. Among them are increasing price pressures on affordable housing as local markets heat up, reductions in the supply of affordable housing due to public housing demolitions and to prepayments/opt-outs in the private assisted stock,(21) and welfare system changes that will cut significant numbers of families from the TANF program within the next six months. Beyond these factors, substance abuse and mental illness will continue to contribute to loss of permanent housing, as will domestic violence and health emergencies that wipe out people’s resources to make rent or mortgage payments. An economic downturn in the future could lead to loss of jobs and housing for families and individuals now living at the margin.
If the need for emergency shelter and services will continue to be felt, then there is also substantial need for related research. One area of need is for an up-to-date picture of the shelter and service agencies and their clients. The National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients, conducted by the Census Bureau between October 1995 and November 1996, collected information about the providers of homeless assistance and the characteristics of homeless persons who use their services. Analysis of the data, currently underway, should produce newer estimates of shelter capacity and utilization, as well as current information on the kinds of services being provided in these settings.
Nevertheless, many other aspects of this topic are not currently being studied. Research is needed in these areas:
What are the main strategies being used for homelessness prevention, and what has been the impact of these interventions? A thorough study of prevention would include careful investigation of the program types, the criteria for selecting the populations served, and the impacts, to determine the types of circumstances in which specific prevention methods can be effective.
There are differing needs among different groups in the homeless population. The needs of families with children—and of unattached youth—are not likely to be the same as those of homeless individuals with chronic mental illness, substance abuse problems, or HIV. On the other hand, there could be significant areas of overlap (especially regarding substance abuse). Careful research on the different subpopulations and their needs, carried out over an extended period, could help improve service targeting and could reveal whether the causes of homelessness are changing over time.
As Burt (1998) has noted in her paper for this symposium, with respect to services, we know considerably less about what works for homeless families than we do about assisting the special-needs parts of the homeless population. Clearly, affordable housing—or provision of housing subsidy through public housing or Section 8—appears to be an important factor in stabilizing formerly homeless families.(22) But is it sufficient? What about the role of case management and stabilization services, with or without transitional housing?(23)
More generally, we do not have good data or analyses on the effectiveness of services designed to move poor families toward economic self-sufficiency. Despite the welfare system changes that put such a premium on entering the world of work, we have little systematic knowledge of what means are effective in helping single parents make this transition, or of the circumstances in which particular interventions do help. Thus, research needs to be conducted in a variety of settings, including homeless shelters and transitional housing (but also including public housing and other places where there are concentrations of low-income families) to address the challenges these families increasingly face.
The last of these proposed study topics suggests that research on the homeless and research about other parts of the low-income population should be closely linked. Especially in light of the evidence that homelessness is episodic, we need to focus more on why—and when—families and individuals lose their ability to live independently. In the coming winter of welfare cut-offs and continuing shrinkage of the affordable housing stock, this question could become the most urgent one of all.
Early, Dirk W. (1998). The Role of Subsidized Housing in Reducing Homelessness: An Empirical Investigation Using Micro-Data. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 17(4): 687-696, Fall.
Feins, J. D., Fosburg, L. B., & Locke, G. (1994). Evaluation of the Emergency Shelter Grants Program. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, September.
Fosburg, L. B., Locke, G. P., Peck, L. & Finkel, M. (1997). National Evaluation of the Shelter Plus Care Program. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, October.
Rog, D. J. & Gutman, M. (1997). The Homeless Families Program: A Summary of Key Findings. In S. L. Isaacs & J. R. Knickman (eds.) To Improve Health and Health Care: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Anthology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 209-231.
U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. (1989). 1988 National Survey of Shelter for the Homeless. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, March.
U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. (1998). Rental Housing Assistance—The Crisis Continues (The 1997 Report to Congress on Worst Case Housing Needs). Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, April.
U. S. General Accounting Office. (1987). Homelessness: Implementation of Food and Shelter Programs under the McKinney Act. Washington, DC: U. S. General Accounting Office, December.
(1) In many cases,crossing the threshhold into an emergency shelter is one of many entryways that a homeless person may take into the continuum of care.
(2) See Judith D. Feins, Linda B. Fosburg, and Gretchen Locke, Evaluation of the Emergency Shelter Grants Program (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, September 1994).
(3) The 1996 National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients, conducted by the Census Bureau and sponsored by a dozen Federal agencies under the auspices of the Interagency Council on the Homeless, will provide a more current description. However, its results have not been published yet.
(4) These organizations included the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities of America, and the International Union of Gospel Missions.
(5) Beginning October 1, 1998, Indian Tribes are no longer eligible for ESG funds. Instead, they may apply for the new Native American Housing Block Grant.
(6) Since 1995, grant amounts under ESG and several other HUD programs for the homeless have been combined into the Homeless Assistance Grants (also administered by HUD).
(7) The early implementation of the federal food and shelter programs is detailed in the U.S. General Accounting Office publication Homelessness: Implementation of Food and Shelter Programs under the McKinney Act (Washington, DC, December 1987).
(8) The differences between the data collected for HUD's 1998 survey and those collected for this evaluation of the ESG program are attributable to sampling. HUD’s study was designed to assess the characteristics of all shelters nationwide, rather than the subset funded by the ESG program (which does not fund boarding houses, welfare hotels, or SROs).
(9) However, if a person’s only impairment is substance abuse, he/she may not be considered eligible to stay in a Safe Haven.
(10) In fact, almost a fifth of the providers receiving ESG funds in FY91 did not operate emergency shelters. The non-shelter providers using ESG funds included health care facilities, counseling agencies, residential treatment facilities, local governments, and a variety of other entities.
(11) The list of services in the survey did not include "case management."
(12) Core services are typically considered operating costs and are allowable operating costs under the ESG program regulations.
(13) Recall that some providers are not shelters, and that some shelters are day-only operations that may not offer bed space.
(14) It is noteworthy that single youth, especially teenage males, are frequently not allowed in night-only or 24-hour shelters. The day shelters are their only alternative. Having to return to the streets at night, they are a very vulnerable special needs group.
(15) See Fosburg, et al. (1997) for a discussion of the Shelter Plus Care program administered by HUD. Eligible program participants targeted by this program are disabled homeless persons (and their families) who have serious mental illness, chronic alcohol or other drug problems, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), or some combination of these disabilities.
(16) Among homelessness prevention providers, a substantial proportion of the client population came from a housing rather than shelter situation; a total of about 40 percent of these clients came from private rental housing, public housing, or an owner-occupied home. An additional 16 percent were living with friends or relatives. This latter group was at the greatest risk of homelessness. Other prevention efforts were directed toward placing shelter residents in permanent housing.
(17) The shelter providers in these figures were estimated to cover about 40 percent of the shelter bed capacity nationwide and about 50 percent of average nightly occupancy.
(18) Again, once they are analyzed. data from the 1996 National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients will provide updated figures on shelter capacity.
(19) For purposes of analysis, occupancy rate was calculated by dividing the provider's reported bed capacity by the reported average nightly census. Computed occupancy rates that exceeded 150 percent of total bed capacity were excluded from the average figure.
(20) No direct data on shelter time limits are available from this study.
(21) HUD’s 1997 Report to Congress on Worst Case Housing Needs finds that the stock of rental housing affordable to the lowest income families is shrinking, and Congress has eliminated funding for new rental assistance since 1995. Further, worst case needs are increasing fastest among the working poor. See Rental Housing Assistance--The Crisis Continues (The 1997 Report to Congress on Worst Case Housing Needs) (Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development, April 1998), Executive Summary.
(22) An analysis challenging the view that expansion of subsidized housing will reduce the number of homeless people can be found in Dirk W. Early, "The Role of Subsidized Housing in Reducing Homelessness: An Empirical Investigation Using Micro-Data" Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 17:4 (Fall 1998), pp. 687-696.
(23) In studies of the Homeless Families Program, which combined case management and Section 8 housing (and which was sponsored by HUD and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), researchers reported that there were encouraging gains in residential stability but that families were still heavily reliant on federal support. The lack of progress in employment suggested questions about how durable the gains in stability would be. See D. Rog and M. Gutman, "The Homeless Families
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