Step One: Accessing Local Support for Urgent Needs
The National Alliance to End Homelessness does not provide direct services such as housing or case management. If you are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, please contact a person in your local community who helps people who are experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.
If you are at risk of or currently experiencing homelessness, the first step is to get in touch with the homeless response system in your community. You may need to call a hotline or go to a community-designated organization for services. Your community may have a “homeless hotline,” “2-1-1,” or a local department of social/human services that serves as the “front door” to receiving any kind of help.
Getting In Touch With the Shelter System in Your Community
Accessing Health Care in Your Community
Accessing Food in Your Community
Step Two: Determining how best to help you
Exploring options other than shelter.
Having a safe, alternative to shelter is often a much better way of resolving your housing crisis. Provider staff may try to help you maintain your current housing (if you have any) and resolve conflicts that are keeping you from staying there. They may negotiate with a friend or family to extend your housing and may be able to assist you with rent or utilities.
If shelter is the only option.
If you can’t stay where you stayed last night or there is no safe alternative for you, then provider staff will likely assess your strengths and needs relative to others who are also in need of a shelter bed. This assessment will ask you questions about your physical and mental health and your age. They may also ask how long you have been living on the street (or other place not meant for people to sleep in), if you have children, your income, employment history, and criminal history. These questions are not meant to disqualify you from services but to make the best match to services you may be eligible for.
To get connected with a person in your local community who helps people who are experiencing or at-risk of homelessness
Assessing permanent housing needs/preferences.
In addition to determining whether you need shelter, this assessment will explore what other housing needs and preferences you have. This process may happen in stages with different providers based on your needs but is meant to help you move as quickly as possible from your current situation back into your own home.
Step Three: Prioritizing for Shelter and Housing
Help for those living outside.
Help for those “doubled up,” unstably housed, or imminently homeless.
Help for Specific Populations
Step Four: Referral to shelter and/or housing
Referred to shelter.
Once provider staff have assessed and determined your strengths, needs, and vulnerability, you may be referred to a shelter bed immediately. If you are not referred to a shelter bed, you may be placed on a waitlist for shelter. It depends on how your community makes referrals to shelter, so be sure to ask what you should expect or do next if you are not immediately referred to shelter.
Referred to housing resources.
In addition to being referred to shelter, the provider staff should provide an explanation as to what housing resources may be available to you. There is no guarantee, but you may be referred to housing resources such as rapid re-housing, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, the Housing Choice Voucher program (Section 8), or other housing resources. Be sure to ask what resources you may be eligible for.
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