Homeless Assistance Services and Networks

By 2003, homeless people in most communities across the United States had access to a much broader array of programs and services than existed even as recently as a decade ago. The availability of federal resources has stimulated much of this expansion, and federal program requirements have also stimulated service coordination. Community experience over the years of developing service networks for currently homeless people has also had an important effect. Many communities with good service networks have realized that they will never end homelessness as long as all they do is help currently homeless people. The result is an effort to expand prevention activities, develop affordable housing, and devise networks to address the factors that push people into homelessness. To discover what differentiates true systems from loose associations of providers, this entry examines the variety and structure of homeless programs and services, including intake procedures, service linkages, and other “system” aspects of homeless assistance networks, as well as funding fragmentation and other challenges.