Service Locations and Program Types
Estimates from NSHAPC data indicate there are approximately 21,000 service locations in the United States, operating about 40,000 homeless assistance programs. A little over half of the service locations (about 11,000) offer only one homeless assistance program, and a little less than half offer two or more programs. For purposes of this study, a service location is the building or physical space at which one or more programs are offered, and a homeless assistance program is a set of services offered to the same group of clients at a single location (see chapter 1 for a detailed discussion of definitions).
Three features of NSHAPC's definition of a program are important to keep in mind throughout this chapter: (1) nonhomeless clients often use some of these programs; (2) NSHAPC programs are not the only sources of assistance to homeless clients; and (3) many programs similar to NSHAPC programs may exist in a community but have not been included because they do not target their services toward homeless clients (food pantries and health programs are examples).2 Figure 4.1 shows the estimated number of NSHAPC programs by four general program types of housing, food, health, and other programs. Note that financial/ housing programs (e.g., Emergency Food and Shelter Program, welfare, public housing programs) were not an original NSHAPC category, but were mentioned frequently enough under "other programs" to warrant presentation as a separate category. Food pantries are the most numerous type of program serving homeless clients, with an estimated 9,000 programs nationwide. Emergency shelters are next, with almost 5,700 programs, followed closely by transitional housing programs (4,400), soup kitchens and other distributors of prepared meals (3,500), outreach programs (3,300), and voucher distribution programs (3,100). As a group, homeless assistance programs with a health focus are least numerous.
3"Program contacts" are the sum of all program estimates of people they expected to serve on an average day in February 1996. The phrase "program contacts" is used to remind the reader that these estimates contain an unknown and unknowable amount of duplication, as people could and many do use more than one program in a day. Note also that these figures differ from the geographic distribution of homeless clients because they reflect all clients, homeless or not.
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