The Emergency & Transitional Shelter Population: 2010

Studying the population in emergency and transitional shelters for people experiencing homelessness provides information about one segment of the group quarters population in the United States. This special report focuses on the 209,000 people enumerated in the 2010 Census at emergency and transitional shelters and their demographic characteristics and geographic distribution. Although this population accounted for only 2.6 percent of the nearly 8 million people in group quarters, examining this group provides information on the portion of the population experiencing homelessness that is valuable to federal, state, and local agencies for a variety of reasons such as program planning and implementation.