The Emergency Food and Shelter National Board Program (EFS) is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), making the program somewhat unique in that its purpose is outside of the agency's traditional focus on preparedness and disaster recovery for individual disaster events. EFS funding is provided to private non-profit organizations and local governments to supplement and expand their efforts to provide shelter, food, and supportive services for homeless individuals, to strengthen efforts to create more effective and innovative local programs, and to conduct minimum rehabilitation of existing mass shelter or mass feeding facilities, but only to the extent necessary to make facilities safe, sanitary, and bring them into compliance with local building codes. The EFS program began in 1983. For most of its history, the program's funding has generally increased during times of high unemployment and decreased as the unemployment rate declined. However, in recent years, the program's funding has been reduced. In FY2008, the program received an appropriation of $200 million. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ( P.L. 111-5 , ARRA) temporarily increased the EFS program's funding to $300 million for FY2009. Since then, the program has received an appropriation of $200 million for FY2010, $120 million for FY2012, and $120 million for FY2012. Congressional interest in the EFS program has increased in recent years, primarily because the program's authorization expired in 1994 and it has been operating under authority provided by appropriations. Also, delays in distributing funds over the last two fiscal years have caused uncertainty among recipient organizations. Given current fiscal conditions, and the lack of program authorization, EFS advocates are concerned that the program's funding, $120 million in FY2012, could be in jeopardy. Some observers also question the program's focus on supporting emergency services, preferring a "more balanced" approach that includes meeting immediate emergency needs for food and shelter, but places added emphasis on supportive services designed to prevent long-term homelessness, such as job counseling and permanent housing. This report opens with a legislative history of the EFS program. It then examines the program's current structure and operations, including the composition and responsibilities of the EFS National Board (hereinafter National Board), which is chaired by FEMA, the formula the National Board uses to allocate available funds to eligible local jurisdictions, and the composition and responsibilities of EFS local boards. The report then provides an analysis of the EFS program's relationship to other programs assisting those with acute needs, examines its funding, and congressional debate concerning its efficacy in helping individuals meet emergency needs and transition out of poverty. The EFS program's origins can be traced back to the winter of 1980. At that time, Paul Bloom, Chief of the Compliance Division at the Department of Energy (DOE) during the Carter Administration, noted that DOE had accrued about $4 million in interest payments derived from negotiated penalty payment settlements from oil companies. He considered how the interest payments might be used to address unmet energy needs at the local level for families facing daunting heating bills. He contacted representatives from several national social service providers, including The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities USA, the Council of Jewish Federations, and the American Red Cross, and suggested that DOE could release the $4 million to these organizations if they could use the funds to quickly provide energy assistance to those families and individuals with the greatest needs. The funds were subsequently released to these charities. In 1981, the incoming Reagan Administration announced its intention to recapture these funds. After discussions and negotiations with the non-profit charitable organizations, which reassured the new Administration as to the use of the expended funds, then-DOE Secretary James Edwards announced that plans for a recovery of all the funds were no longer necessary. Eventually, about $1 million of the funds, pending disbursement, were returned. Representatives of these charities, viewing the ad hoc program as an example of a public-private partnership that should be replicated, approached House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill with a proposal to establish a pilot program, with statutory authority, to assist the homeless. The charities recommended that the program be placed in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), primarily as a means to emphasize the emergency nature of the services to be provided. The charities were familiar with FEMA given the agency's disaster response and recovery role, which includes providing assistance to families and individuals. The recommendation to place the pilot program within FEMA also reflected the charities' concerns about the stewardship of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) at that time. HUD was expected to have an interest in administering the program. House Speaker O'Neill indicated an interest in the proposal and, on March 3, 1983, the House approved legislation ( H.R. 1718 , the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Act of 1983) appropriating $50 million for an emergency food and shelter program. The bill was similar in structure to the charities' proposal, and included the establishment of a National Board chaired by FEMA (FEMA was then an independent agency and is now within the Department of Homeland Security) and comprised of representatives from six non-governmental organizations associated with the provision of homeless services: the American Red Cross; Catholic Charities USA; the National Council of the Churches of Christ; The Salvation Army; the Council of Jewish Federations; and United Way of America. The National Board was charged with the responsibility to determine how to distribute the funds to individual localities. Localities receiving the funds were to form local boards, to be comprised, to the extent practicable, of representatives of the same organizations as the National Board except that the mayor or appropriate head of government replaced FEMA's representative. Local boards were to distribute the funds to homeless services providers on a competitive basis. On March 17, 1983, the Senate passed the bill, but with amendments. Like the House version of the bill, the Senate's version would have appropriated $50 million for the program. However, the Senate bill did not include the establishment of a National Board and local boards to distribute the funds. Instead, the Senate bill directed FEMA to distribute the funds, in conjunction with the Director of the Office of Community Services, directly to states using the Community Services Block Grant formula. States would then determine how to distribute the funds among its local jurisdictions. The final version of the bill was passed by Congress on March 24, 1983, and signed into law by President Reagan later that same day. In a unique agreement, the act ( P.L. 98-8 , the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Act of 1983) appropriated $50 million for the Senate's version of the Food Distribution and Emergency Shelter program, and $50 million for the House's version of the program. The enactment of these two programs was largely a reaction by Congress to the recession of 1982, and the growing visibility of homelessness in America as depicted in the media. These programs also reflected the recognition, by Congress, of the burden placed on charitable groups and local governments in addressing these unmet needs. In early 1983, Congress finally acknowledged that local governments and the non-profit sector could no longer be expected to carry responsibility for sheltering the nation's growing homeless population without substantial assistance from the federal government. Until that time, small amounts of funding for shelter assistance had been made available through a variety of federal agencies, but there had never been any coordinated approach to the problem. The enactment of two programs reflected competing views concerning which delivery system was best. The Senate's program, like most federal grants, was allocated through the states to ensure that the allocation of funds was subject to rigorous accountability standards. Because the House's program by-passed the states, it was expected to distribute funds more rapidly to local homeless services providers than the Senate's program. However, because the states were not involved, some questioned whether the National Board and local boards were capable of administering the program as well as the states. To address these concerns, the National Board imposed rigorous accountability standards on all program transactions. The following year, Congress discontinued the appropriation of funds for the Senate's version of the program. EFS program funds were, and continue to be, used to supplement mass sheltering and feeding facilities, to provide one month's rent or mortgage to prevent evictions and foreclosures, and to provide one month's utility payments to prevent the cut-offs of utility services. Given the absence of reliable counts of the homeless and the lack of consensus concerning how to measure the need for assistance among the homeless and hungry, the EFS National Board created a formula, using unemployment and poverty statistics, to determine the amount of funding to be awarded directly to communities across the nation. These statistics were thought to be representative of current needs within a community. As will be discussed, modifications to the formula have taken place over time. The EFS program received statutory authorization in 1987 ( P.L. 100-77 , the Stewart B. McKinney-Bruce Vento Homeless Assistance Act, Title III ─ McKinney-Vento Act). The program was last reauthorized in 1994, and has been operating under authority provided by annual appropriations acts. As shown in Figure 1 , the program's funding remained at about $150 million during the early 2000s, and was increased temporarily in FY2009 to $300 million. Since then, the program has received an appropriation of $200 million for FY2010, $120 million for FY2012, and $120 million for FY2012 (see Table A -1 for annual amounts). The composition of the EFS National Board (hereafter National Board) has remained constant since its inception in 1983. FEMA continues, by law, to chair the National Board, and the representation from national organizations remains the same: the American Red Cross, Catholic Charities USA, the National Council of Churches, the Salvation Army, the Jewish Federations of North America, and United Way Worldwide.