But last year in Alabama and Mississippi, two of the states hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, the Red Cross was the primary shelter operator.
The primary shelter for Jackson County is at the Marianna high school where some 550 had filed in the lead-up to the storm.
Thousands of refugees from Hurricane Katrina boarded buses for Houston, but others quickly took their places at the filthy, teeming Superdome, which has been serving as the primary shelter.
About 60,000 people remain in the city's primary shelter system, and the most recent estimates show that it takes a family an average of 14 months to move out of the shelter system.
Although the term homeless conjures images of desperate families evicted from their apartments and reduced to lugging their belongings in battered suitcases, families rarely come to the city's primary shelter intake unit in the Bronx from the street.
Using vehicles as a primary shelter has become a fact of life in Los Angeles, where more than 34,000 people are homeless.
Archaeologists believe cavemen actually lived outside the caves, but that the misnomer has been popularized thanks to the great preservation skills of caves, which led some to think they were typically used as primary shelters.
The makeshift huts serving as the primary shelter for hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees are made from polythene paper, sticks and cardboard, which simply cannot withstand the rain.
Talk story about the Children's Center, New York City's primary temporary shelter for neglected, abused or delinquent children.
By Fred C. Shapiro The New Yorker, July 5 , 1969P. 21 Talk story about the Children's Center, New York City's primary temporary shelter for neglected, abused or delinquent children.
