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What people ask for

How many people ask Front Door for each kind of help, where, and when. We keep only counts. We never keep what anyone wrote or who they are.

Staff time and money savedOpen dataFor agencies

Demo dataDemo data, modeled from public data on when people look for help. Our own counts replace it as they grow.

Nothing here is a real count of people. The patterns through the year come from published government and 211 data. The size is made up.

How the demo is madeShow our own counts

Demo data. In the last 12 months, people in every state asked most about Food (100%).

Choose what to show

Food in every state, Oct 13, 2025 to Oct 11, 2026

QuestionsDemo data
274,028

▼ -3% vs the week before

Needed help this weekDemo data
82,200
Unmet needDemo dataNo program and no listed place nearby fit
16,405

Over time. Questions each week, by kind of help.

Demo data

On a phone, the chart shows the last 13. The table has every one.

See the numbers
FoodTotal
Week of Oct 135,2745,274
Week of Oct 205,7425,742
Week of Oct 276,0556,055
Week of Nov 36,3046,304
Week of Nov 106,6276,627
Week of Nov 176,6806,680
Week of Nov 246,6866,686
Week of Dec 16,7226,722
Week of Dec 86,7456,745
Week of Dec 156,5286,528
Week of Dec 226,0216,021
Week of Dec 295,4595,459
Week of Jan 54,8914,891
Week of Jan 124,3494,349
Week of Jan 194,2504,250
Week of Jan 264,1644,164
Week of Feb 24,0644,064
Week of Feb 93,9313,931
Week of Feb 163,9433,943
Week of Feb 234,0654,065
Week of Mar 24,2564,256
Week of Mar 94,3644,364
Week of Mar 164,4314,431
Week of Mar 234,6434,643
Week of Mar 304,7624,762
Week of Apr 64,8134,813
Week of Apr 134,8664,866
Week of Apr 204,8444,844
Week of Apr 274,8934,893
Week of May 45,0985,098
Week of May 115,1135,113
Week of May 185,2405,240
Week of May 255,2945,294
Week of Jun 15,3725,372
Week of Jun 85,5255,525
Week of Jun 155,5285,528
Week of Jun 225,5325,532
Week of Jun 295,3455,345
Week of Jul 65,1425,142
Week of Jul 134,9574,957
Week of Jul 205,0425,042
Week of Jul 275,0795,079
Week of Aug 35,0635,063
Week of Aug 105,0765,076
Week of Aug 175,2685,268
Week of Aug 245,5585,558
Week of Aug 315,7735,773
Week of Sep 76,0386,038
Week of Sep 146,1316,131
Week of Sep 215,9185,918
Week of Sep 285,7215,721
Week of Oct 54,8434,843

Where. Questions by state.

Demo data

On a phone, pick a state in the box above.

Shading

  • Most questions
  • More
  • Some
  • Fewer
  • Fewer than 10, or none

Most questions

  1. 01California31,880▼ -4%
  2. 02Texas25,164▼ -3%
  3. 03Florida18,570▼ -4%
  4. 04New York15,946▼ -4%
  5. 05Pennsylvania10,503▼ -4%
  6. 06Illinois10,247▼ -4%
  7. 07Ohio9,630▼ -3%
  8. 08Georgia9,001▼ -3%
  9. 09North Carolina8,945▼ -3%
  10. 10Michigan8,150▲ +10%
  11. 11New Jersey7,636▼ -3%
  12. 12Virginia7,116▲ +10%
  13. 13Washington6,450▼ -3%
  14. 14Arizona6,174▼ -4%
  15. 15Tennessee5,809▼ -16%
See the numbers: State
StateQuestionsThis weekUnmet
California31,8809,7571,891
Texas25,1647,5021,474
Florida18,5705,5031,124
New York15,9464,797956
Pennsylvania10,5033,124623
Illinois10,2473,067606
Ohio9,6302,942564
Georgia9,0012,666527
North Carolina8,9452,671536
Michigan8,1502,443485
New Jersey7,6362,347473
Virginia7,1162,139413
Washington6,4501,908396
Arizona6,1741,838371
Tennessee5,8091,718349
Massachusetts5,7921,706345
Indiana5,5991,711329
Maryland5,0761,499291
Missouri5,0231,526302
Wisconsin4,8341,444285
Colorado4,7631,459282
Minnesota4,6161,364286
South Carolina4,4281,279269
Alabama4,1721,238250
Louisiana3,7381,113225
Kentucky3,7241,086231
Oregon3,4521,031210
Oklahoma3,317986204
Connecticut2,913867182
Utah2,824861175
Nevada2,620793160
Iowa2,609777151
Arkansas2,491760149
Kansas2,401741144
Mississippi2,385699140
New Mexico1,726530104
Nebraska1,62848798
Idaho1,61747998
West Virginia1,42641788
Hawaii1,16534265
Maine1,13836062
New Hampshire1,13533663
Montana91528454
Rhode Island89827554
Delaware84125952
South Dakota74822252
North Dakota64119150
Alaska59317850
District of Columbia56917244
Vermont51816142
Wyoming47214531

Rows that say fewer than 10 are hidden on purpose. When only one row would be hidden, a second one is hidden too, so it cannot be worked out from the total.

Urgent and unmet. The share of questions each week that needed help this week, and the share nothing fit.

Demo data

See the numbers
Needed help this weekUnmet need
Week of Oct 1331%6%
Week of Oct 2030%6%
Week of Oct 2730%6%
Week of Nov 330%6%
Week of Nov 1030%6%
Week of Nov 1730%6%
Week of Nov 2429%6%
Week of Dec 130%6%
Week of Dec 830%6%
Week of Dec 1530%6%
Week of Dec 2230%6%
Week of Dec 2930%6%
Week of Jan 530%6%
Week of Jan 1231%6%
Week of Jan 1931%6%
Week of Jan 2630%6%
Week of Feb 230%6%
Week of Feb 930%6%
Week of Feb 1629%6%
Week of Feb 2329%6%
Week of Mar 229%6%
Week of Mar 929%6%
Week of Mar 1630%6%
Week of Mar 2329%6%
Week of Mar 3030%6%
Week of Apr 630%6%
Week of Apr 1330%6%
Week of Apr 2030%6%
Week of Apr 2730%6%
Week of May 431%6%
Week of May 1130%6%
Week of May 1830%6%
Week of May 2531%6%
Week of Jun 130%6%
Week of Jun 830%6%
Week of Jun 1530%6%
Week of Jun 2230%6%
Week of Jun 2930%6%
Week of Jul 630%6%
Week of Jul 1329%6%
Week of Jul 2030%6%
Week of Jul 2730%6%
Week of Aug 330%6%
Week of Aug 1032%6%
Week of Aug 1732%6%
Week of Aug 2431%6%
Week of Aug 3130%6%
Week of Sep 730%6%
Week of Sep 1430%6%
Week of Sep 2130%6%
Week of Sep 2830%6%
Week of Oct 530%6%

How we count. What each number means and what we keep.

A question
When someone asks Front Door their first question, our matching service sorts it: the kind of help, and whether they need it this week. We add one to the count for that kind of help, place and week.
The place
The ZIP code or county the person gave us, if they gave one. We never use an address, a city block or a phone location.
What we keep
The count, and nothing else: not the words, not a name, not an account, not a browser or network address.
Unmet need
No state or federal program fit the question well, and we list no office, nonprofit or food site for that kind of help in the person's county.
Small counts
Any count under 10 shows as fewer than 10, in the charts too. When only one count in a list would be hidden, we hide a second one too.
Not counted
The demo site, questions about Front Door itself, crisis questions and letters.
Weeks
Weeks start on Monday, in UTC. The page reads the counts again at most every 15 minutes.

Read our privacy page

How the demo is made

The demo is a model, not a count. It shows what this page will look like and the kinds of patterns to expect, until our own counts are large enough to replace it.

  • Size: the model assumes 40,000 questions a week across the country. That number is made up so the charts have something to show.
  • Kinds of help: each kind gets a share of all questions and a month by month pattern, read from the published sources below.
  • Places: each state gets its share by population (Census county estimates for 2024), and each county its share of its state.
  • Housing mixes rent help, which is steady through the year, with help paying utility bills, which rises in winter in colder states and in summer in hotter ones.
  • Urgent and unmet shares in the demo are made up, to show how those charts read.
  • A small fixed wobble keeps each week from looking drawn with a ruler. The same choice always draws the same numbers.

Search trends

We looked for Google Trends numbers for searches like food stamps, SNAP, rent help, Medicaid, child care help, utility help, unemployment, food bank and WIC, in English and Spanish. Google does not allow automated reading of its Trends pages, and Google has not published a dataset for these searches, so we did not use Trends. The demo is modeled from published government and 211 data instead, listed below.

Where each pattern comes from

Food
Food help rises in September and again in November and December, and is lowest in February. From the share of 211 requests that were about food, month by month, 2022 to 2024 (Western Pennsylvania's open 211 data, the only month-by-month 211 data we found). In November 2025 many states paid partial SNAP benefits during the federal shutdown; the model does not add that event.
Housing
Rent help peaks in January and again from August to October, with a dip in November, following eviction filings in 43 cities and counties tracked by the Eviction Lab, Tacoma among them. About a third of housing questions are about utility bills (211's national split of housing and utility requests in 2025). In colder states that part follows heating help, highest in January and February; in hotter states it follows help with electric bills, higher from spring to fall; states in between get half of each. The shapes come from 211 requests in Western Pennsylvania, where a winter shutoff ban moves electric requests to spring, so the cooling shape is rough.
Health
Medicaid and CHIP applications are steady through the year, highest in January, from CMS application data for 2018, 2019, 2024 and 2025 (the pandemic years are left out). Marketplace open enrollment, November 1 to January 15, adds to it in Washington.
Money
Money mixes steady cash help with the tax season: a quarter of it follows when people file federal returns (IRS 2025 filing season counts, most from February to April), when Washington's Working Families Tax Credit also opens. The other three quarters are kept flat, because we found no monthly pattern for cash help.
Care
Child care help climbs from May and peaks in August, before school starts, from the share of 211 requests about child care, 2022 to 2024 (Western Pennsylvania; a small sample).
Education
Education help, mostly school supplies, is about three times as high in July and August, from the share of 211 requests about education, 2022 to 2024 (Western Pennsylvania).
Work
Unemployment help peaks in January, rises again in early July and in December, and is lowest in September, from new unemployment claims (not seasonally adjusted) in every state, 2012 to 2019 and 2022 to 2025, Department of Labor.
Legal help
Legal help is close to flat through the year, from the share of 211 requests about legal help, 2022 to 2024 (Western Pennsylvania).
Safety
Safety is close to flat through the year, from 211 requests about domestic violence, 2022 to 2024 (Western Pennsylvania). National hotline research finds calls do not rise over the holidays, so the model adds no holiday spike.

How questions split between kinds of help: housing (with utilities) 48% and food 13%, from United Way's national 211 numbers for 2025 (19 million referrals). The rest is split the way 211 requests split in Western Pennsylvania in 2024, the only full breakdown we found. 211 is a phone line for local help, so Front Door's own mix will differ; our counts will show how.

Sources

  1. 1. 2-1-1 Requests/Referrals (2023-2025) and 2-1-1 Requests (2020-2023). United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania, hosted by Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center (WPRDC); license CC BY, historical, coverage 2020-01-01 to 2025-08-27. calendar 2024 rows, level_1/level_2 classification counts Read it
  2. 2. States scramble to send full SNAP food benefits to millions of people after government shutdown ends. Associated Press (Geoff Mulvihill, David A. Lieb), via WHYY, 2025-11-13. 42 million people on SNAP; 'about two-thirds of states had issued only partial benefits or none at all'; USDA guidance Thursday Nov 13 to issue full November allotments Read it
  3. 3. Using 211 Data to Gauge Eighth District Economic Conditions. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, On the Economy (Summers-Gabr, Rodgers), 2026-02-09. Figure 3 text: food assistance requests rose in October 2025, more-substantial increases in November; data from 211 Counts dashboards for AR, IL, KY, MO, TN Read it
  4. 4. Eviction Tracking System: Version 3.0, all sites monthly data. The Eviction Lab, Princeton University (Hepburn, Haas, et al.), 2026 (file downloaded 2026-10-10). columns city, month, filings_2020, filings_avg, filings_avg_prepandemic_baseline. Download page: https://dev.evictionlab.org/eviction-tracking/get-the-data/ (no license stated; footer 'All rights reserved'; cite as Hepburn, Haas, et al., Eviction Tracking System: Version 3.0, Princeton University, 2026). Read it
  5. 5. A New Baseline: Changes to Our Eviction Metrics. The Eviction Lab, 2025-05-08. baseline moved to average of same months across 2023 and 2024 Read it
  6. 6. Preliminary Analysis: Eviction Filing Patterns in 2022. The Eviction Lab (Vallejo, Haas, Hepburn), 2023-03-09. text: Q4 decline 'follows a predictable seasonal pattern'; Jan 2022 ~78,000 filings, Aug 2022 >114,000 Read it
  7. 7. State Medicaid and CHIP Applications, Eligibility Determinations, and Enrollment Data (Performance Indicator dataset), September 2026 release. CMS (data.medicaid.gov), catalog record on data.gov, modified 2026-09-25. columns 'New Applications Submitted to Medicaid and CHIP Agencies' and 'Applications for Financial Assistance Submitted to the State Based Marketplace'; license U.S. Government Works (https://www.usa.gov/government-works); dataset id 6165f45b-ca93-5bb5-9d06-db29c692a360 Read it
  8. 8. Dates and deadlines for 2027 health insurance. HealthCare.gov (CMS), accessed 2026-10-10. 'Starting November 1, you can apply for 2027 coverage'; January 15 last day; enroll by December 15 for January 1 start Read it
  9. 9. Washington health insurance marketplace. healthinsurance.org, 2026-10-05. 'open enrollment period for 2027 coverage runs from November 1, 2026 through January 15, 2027 in Washington' Read it
  10. 10. 2025 Filing season statistics, weeks ending Jan 31, Feb 28, Mar 28, May 2, Oct 17 2025. IRS Newsroom, 2025. 'Total returns received' row. Other pages: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/filing-season-statistics-for-week-ending-jan-31-2025 , https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/filing-season-statistics-for-week-ending-feb-28-2025 , https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/filing-season-statistics-for-week-ending-march-28-2025 , https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/filing-season-statistics-for-week-ending-may-2-2025 Read it
  11. 11. Working Families Tax Credit application window opens Feb. 1. Washington State Department of Revenue, 2026-01-29. window begins Feb 1, 2026 for tax year 2025; accepted through Dec 31, 2029; up to $1,330; over 675,000 refunds totaling more than $491.4 million since 2023 Read it
  12. 12. Working Families Tax Credit Program, 2025 Report to the Legislature. Washington State Department of Revenue, 2025-12-29. page 2: program begins accepting applications each year on February 1; page 3 Table 2: TY2024 approvals 284,416 (MeF 253,210, MyDOR 28,949, paper 2,257) Read it
  13. 13. IR-2016-143 (archival): refunds claiming EITC or ACTC held until at least Feb. 15. IRS, 2016-10-28. PATH Act refund hold statement Read it
  14. 14. You can begin filing your taxes on Jan. 26 this year. PBS NewsHour, 2026-01-08. 2026 filing season start Jan 26; deadline April 15 Read it
  15. 15. ETA 539 weekly claims data, ar539.csv (state-level, NSA, 1971 to present). U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Unemployment Insurance, downloaded 2026-10-10, latest week ending 2026-10-03. columns st, rptdate, c3 (initial claims). Example values: US sum week ending 2025-01-11 = 351,735 (2025 high), 2025-09-27 = 178,555 (2025 low); 2025-12-06 = 313,815; 2025-07-12 = 260,103. WA c3 week ending 2026-09-26 = 4,365. Read it
  16. 16. Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims news release. U.S. Department of Labor, 2026-10-08. page 2 Unadjusted Data: 170,333 NSA initial claims week ending Oct 3; seasonal factors expected +8.7% from prior week. State table: Washington advance 4,814, prior week 4,534. Used to validate the CSV. Read it
  17. 17. Education Department opens 2027-28 FAFSA early, marking program's earliest launch. The National News Desk (Emma Koppelman), via KATU, 2026-09-24. form already open at StudentAid.gov; traditional opening Oct 1; previous earliest Sept 24, 2025; FAFSA Simplification Act requires availability by Oct 1 Read it
  18. 18. The Effect of Holidays on Calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline: Comparing Average Call Volume. National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (VAWnet), 2020-11-20. description: 'the number of calls actually decreases during the holidays, including on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day' (2004-2019 data in linked PDFs, not opened) Read it
  19. 19. #CallUtilitiesNow: PUC urges consumers to contact utilities as winter termination moratorium ends March 31, 2023. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, 2023-03-28. 'Between December 1st and March 31st' no shutoffs to income-eligible households; electric, gas, heat-related water Read it
  20. 20. WAC 480-100-143 Winter low-income payment program. Washington State Legislature, current code, accessed 2026-10-10. 'between November 15th and March 15th' utility may not disconnect residential space heating if customer meets conditions (notify, self-certify income, apply for energy assistance, pay plan) Read it
  21. 21. LIHEAP. Washington State Department of Commerce, accessed 2026-10-10. program year Oct 1 to Sep 30; apply once per program year through local agency; income up to 150% FPL Read it
  22. 22. Nearly 1 million assistance calls made to 211 in August. The Source, Washington University in St. Louis (Neil Schoenherr), 2023-09-20. ~150,000 utility payment requests Aug 2023 (+22% vs July); Kreuter: utility payments a particular challenge in late summer Read it
  23. 23. 211 helpline data reveals most pressing U.S. community needs (2025 data). United Way Worldwide, 2026-03-31. 19 million referrals; housing 6 million, 31%; utilities 3.1 million; food 2.5 million; 27 states where housing+utilities > half Read it
  24. 24. The Facts About 211: 2025 Impact Snapshot. United Way Worldwide, 2026. housing 6M (30%), utilities 3.1M, food 2.5M; ranks #4-#7 without counts Read it
  25. 25. 211 helpline data reveals most pressing U.S. community needs (2024 data). United Way Worldwide, 2025-03-26. 16.8M requests, >18M referrals; housing 5.6M, utilities 2.9M, food 2.5M; housing+utilities 47% Read it
  26. 26. Calls to 211 helpline rise in August to the highest level of 2023. Health Communication Research Lab, Washington University in St. Louis (Garg, Golla, Kreuter), 2023-09-09. 872,079 calls Aug vs 785,654 Jul; ~150,000 utility payment requests (+22%); >280,000 housing (+8%) Read it