NSHAPC Methods Highlights

• The National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (NSHAPC) was conducted to provide information about the providers of homeless assistance services and the characteristics of homeless clients who use these services for use by federal agencies responsible for administering homeless assistance programs and other interested parties. The data are national in scope, and the survey is the first to gather, through one effort, a wide range of information relevant to the missions of the federal sponsors. NSHAPC was not designed or conducted to produce a count or estimate of the number of homeless persons.

• NSHAPC is based on a statistical sample designed to represent the entire United States. The sample includes 76 primary sampling areas: the country's 28 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), another 24 randomly sampled small and medium-sized MSAs, and 24 randomly sampled groups of rural counties.

• NSHAPC involved two major phases: surveying administrators of homeless assistance programs through telephone interviews and mail surveys, and conducting face-to-face interviews with the clients of these programs.

• Telephone interviews were conducted with representatives of about 6,400 service locations operating about 12,000 programs. This was followed by a mail survey of about 6,500 programs identified through the telephone interviews. Finally, to reach clients the study randomly selected programs within the primary sampling areas, and from these programs randomly selected about 4,200 program clients who completed in-person interviews.

• NSHAPC covers 16 types of homeless assistance programs: emergency shelters, transitional housing, permanent housing for the formerly homeless, programs offering vouchers for temporary housing, programs accepting vouchers for temporary housing, food pantries (in rural areas), soup kitchens/meal distribution programs, mobile food programs, physical health care programs, mental health care programs, alcohol/drug programs, HIV/AIDS programs, outreach programs, drop-in centers, migrant housing used for homeless people, and other programs.

• This study interviewed a random sample of clients who use homeless assistance programs.* Many were not homeless at the time of the interview. Some had been homeless at some earlier point in their lives, while others had never been homeless. In addition, although NSHAPC is nationally representative, it does not represent homeless people who do not use services or those in communities that have few or no homeless assistance services. These areas may have homeless people but because the NSHAPC sample is service based, they would not be included in this survey.

• All numbers and simple percentages presented in the text have a 90 percent confidence interval (margin of error) less than or equal to 4 percentage points unless otherwise noted. All comparisons presented in the text are statistically significant at a 90 percent level or better (p less than or equal to .10).

• This report does not answer several frequently asked questions, including: How many homeless people are there? How many homeless people are there in my city/county/state? What are the characteristics of homeless people in my city/county/state? What programs work best?

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