Housing and Basic Needs

Each year, DHS chooses several Strategic Initiatives: bold, transformative efforts designed to improve the effectiveness of human services for everyone. During 2024, DHS and its partners made significant progress by focusing on a set of Initiatives and in 2024 (see Accomplishments Report). And in 2025, it is working on 12 new Strategic Initiatives (see 2025 Strategic Initiatives Report).

Pittsburgh-Allegheny County is one of eight sites participating in the Community Choice Demonstration (CCD) – a large-scale, multi-site randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of offering housing mobility-related services […]

New information added. Since 2017, DHS has used data driven models to support prioritization of housing resources. Read more about their development and deployment in the homelessness and behavioral health systems.

This updated 2024 Needs Assessment explores the needs of people living in poverty, barriers to living-wage employment, and challenges to achieving stability and economic security.

This report presents a mixed-methods approach to evaluating the impact of DHS cash assistance program, including longitudinal surveying, a quasi-experimental analysis of administrative data, and semi-structured interviews with cash recipients.

This dashboard reports on application statistics and participant demographics for the Allegheny Go program, a transportation assistance program.

Updated with 2022 data. The Allegheny County Need Index was developed to identify areas of the County that have greater relative need. This report and related materials explore census tracts in need and recent trends.

The Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) partnered with Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) to launch a new transportation assistance program in November 2022 called the Discounted Fares Pilot. This […]

Each year, Allegheny County participates in a national census of the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night. The Point-in-Time count enumerates people experiencing homelessness in the County who are sheltered, unsheltered or participating in a short-term, supportive housing program.

This report highlights the 2023 DHS accomplishments that stood out. There are many, many other achievements. We chose the ones that made the biggest difference.

This data brief focuses on families using emergency shelter in Allegheny County from April 2022-March 2023

A data brief on people using adult-only emergency shelters in Allegheny County from April 2022-March 2023

In its responsibility for administering publicly-funded human services, Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) plans for the allocation of more than $1B in areas that span behavioral health, children […]

This dashboard shows trends in the number of people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness. What is this dashboard about? This dashboard displays: 1) the number of people who were active […]

The Allegheny County Department of Human Services’ (DHS) street outreach team works with people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness, offering them immediate in-person support and help with basic needs, while […]