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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 Housing (100%). Rising fastest from the week before: Housing, up 2%.

Choose what to show

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

QuestionsDemo data
994,581

▲ +2% vs the week before

Needed help this weekDemo data
398,611
Unmet needDemo dataNo program and no listed place nearby fit
219,496

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
HousingTotal
Week of Oct 1320,28220,282
Week of Oct 2019,96119,961
Week of Oct 2719,44119,441
Week of Nov 319,05819,058
Week of Nov 1018,46818,468
Week of Nov 1718,37418,374
Week of Nov 2418,24618,246
Week of Dec 118,76718,767
Week of Dec 818,54318,543
Week of Dec 1519,02819,028
Week of Dec 2219,69719,697
Week of Dec 2920,50720,507
Week of Jan 521,23821,238
Week of Jan 1222,16822,168
Week of Jan 1921,84521,845
Week of Jan 2621,37221,372
Week of Feb 221,31021,310
Week of Feb 921,07421,074
Week of Feb 1620,55920,559
Week of Feb 2319,86119,861
Week of Mar 219,14519,145
Week of Mar 918,72318,723
Week of Mar 1618,62218,622
Week of Mar 2318,51818,518
Week of Mar 3018,34018,340
Week of Apr 618,27718,277
Week of Apr 1317,91417,914
Week of Apr 2017,92917,929
Week of Apr 2717,91017,910
Week of May 418,04618,046
Week of May 1118,53418,534
Week of May 1818,48818,488
Week of May 2518,43118,431
Week of Jun 118,42818,428
Week of Jun 818,47618,476
Week of Jun 1518,43818,438
Week of Jun 2218,47418,474
Week of Jun 2918,47518,475
Week of Jul 618,70318,703
Week of Jul 1318,45218,452
Week of Jul 2018,90218,902
Week of Jul 2718,98118,981
Week of Aug 319,01719,017
Week of Aug 1018,79618,796
Week of Aug 1718,82918,829
Week of Aug 2418,60318,603
Week of Aug 3118,55418,554
Week of Sep 718,87218,872
Week of Sep 1419,23919,239
Week of Sep 2119,38219,382
Week of Sep 2819,85719,857
Week of Oct 517,42717,427

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. 01California116,007▲ +2%
  2. 02Texas90,946▼ -1%
  3. 03Florida67,630▼ -1%
  4. 04New York58,381▲ +4%
  5. 05Pennsylvania38,117▲ +4%
  6. 06Illinois37,502▲ +4%
  7. 07Ohio34,628▲ +5%
  8. 08Georgia32,3160%
  9. 09North Carolina31,984▲ +1%
  10. 10Michigan29,982▲ +5%
  11. 11New Jersey27,577▲ +4%
  12. 12Virginia25,791▲ +1%
  13. 13Washington23,084▲ +5%
  14. 14Arizona22,1450%
  15. 15Tennessee21,499▲ +2%
See the numbers: State
StateQuestionsThis weekUnmet
California116,00746,57326,404
Texas90,94636,74120,012
Florida67,63027,64814,917
New York58,38123,62013,004
Pennsylvania38,11715,5578,337
Illinois37,50215,3548,251
Ohio34,62813,5827,836
Georgia32,31612,9127,107
North Carolina31,98412,5967,004
Michigan29,98211,7626,582
New Jersey27,57711,2386,207
Virginia25,79110,4335,409
Washington23,0849,1054,869
Arizona22,1458,7714,861
Tennessee21,4998,6614,731
Massachusetts20,8478,1954,600
Indiana20,3448,2844,198
Missouri18,3447,2864,035
Maryland18,2827,2674,016
Wisconsin17,7047,0293,906
Colorado17,6897,0373,922
Minnesota16,8146,7293,676
South Carolina16,1936,5353,603
Alabama15,1065,9333,315
Kentucky13,5745,3042,990
Louisiana13,5175,4742,943
Oregon12,4464,8732,764
Oklahoma11,9764,7382,552
Connecticut10,7374,2272,394
Utah10,1684,0202,256
Nevada9,6403,7882,193
Iowa9,3993,7242,068
Arkansas9,0483,5392,055
Kansas8,5913,3901,817
Mississippi8,4403,3881,905
New Mexico6,2552,5491,380
Idaho5,8672,3831,268
Nebraska5,7632,2971,287
West Virginia5,1492,0601,112
Hawaii4,2141,672934
New Hampshire4,1551,670932
Maine4,1381,660906
Montana3,3381,321719
Rhode Island3,2511,311715
Delaware3,0721,244649
South Dakota2,7291,098604
North Dakota2,362930539
Alaska2,155847486
District of Columbia2,061827439
Vermont1,911753411
Wyoming1,713676376

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 1339%23%
Week of Oct 2040%23%
Week of Oct 2740%23%
Week of Nov 341%22%
Week of Nov 1039%22%
Week of Nov 1739%22%
Week of Nov 2440%22%
Week of Dec 141%23%
Week of Dec 840%22%
Week of Dec 1541%23%
Week of Dec 2240%23%
Week of Dec 2939%23%
Week of Jan 540%22%
Week of Jan 1241%22%
Week of Jan 1941%22%
Week of Jan 2639%22%
Week of Feb 240%22%
Week of Feb 940%22%
Week of Feb 1640%22%
Week of Feb 2341%22%
Week of Mar 239%22%
Week of Mar 938%22%
Week of Mar 1639%22%
Week of Mar 2340%22%
Week of Mar 3041%22%
Week of Apr 640%21%
Week of Apr 1340%22%
Week of Apr 2040%22%
Week of Apr 2740%22%
Week of May 439%22%
Week of May 1140%23%
Week of May 1840%23%
Week of May 2540%21%
Week of Jun 139%23%
Week of Jun 840%23%
Week of Jun 1540%23%
Week of Jun 2241%22%
Week of Jun 2941%22%
Week of Jul 641%23%
Week of Jul 1341%22%
Week of Jul 2040%22%
Week of Jul 2740%22%
Week of Aug 340%22%
Week of Aug 1041%21%
Week of Aug 1741%21%
Week of Aug 2440%22%
Week of Aug 3139%22%
Week of Sep 741%22%
Week of Sep 1441%22%
Week of Sep 2140%22%
Week of Sep 2840%23%
Week of Oct 540%22%

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