Shelters are a great alternative when you have no friends or family or nowhere else to reside. The first question that a housing or assistance caseworker will ask you is--
"Do you have friends or family that you can live with?"
Often shelters are filled to capacity. If you are shelter registered, your shelter caseworker will take your contact information and contact you when there is availability. So it is important to provide a reliable contact phone number and mailing address. Always request to have a caseworker or the name of a regular staff person on site. You may need the contact name for any applicable housing benefit award, and to provide to a landlord for consideration.
When you reside in a shelter there is limited space for personal belongings. In fact, I would suggest that you keep such belongings in your personal vehicle. Otherwise, you will live out of black trash bags for the timeframe of your stay. It is important to purchase strong durable trash bags. Some shelters may require you to leave out of the building--with your belongings in hand--every day. Then, you will be required to re-register for its evening stay.
By law, shelter space like any other dwelling place cannot exceed a certain number of people who are in need. If you have children, try to obtain registration at a family shelter: most are a person-with-kids shelter, not a couple with kids shelter. Children will be required to talk and play "quietly". You may have to leave out of the shelter if they become too noisy. Some shelters have strict rules that once you leave you can not re-enter due to population count within the building at one time.
Shelters are loud, public, and generally, there are no private bathrooms or kitchens. If it weren't for my maternal grandmother's persuasion to a relative, after the few minutes I had to leave my then-husband ... his dwelling place .. as a married couple ... I don't know what to say. It is my opinion, regardless of natural disasters, there are a lot of people who are actually living in cars or simply homeless because there has been no real productivity in choices of affordable housing financial options in our country. Married couples have an advantage of two incomes, regardless of their overall financial situation. After a divorce, some entities classify you as being single vs. being divorced (or eliminating the history of a marriage that ended in divorce). A single individual must earn a standard income to live out of the poverty category. My situation was that I had the work experience that my community would not verify which led me to be dysfunctional in self-sufficiency actions. An example of my life experience: If you worked at a factory for 20 years and the factory left, but your supervisor is still around. You would think it would be simple to have the individual simply verify your work experience, right? It was at this infamous historical time in my life that I knew something ... a mystery of my hometown community ... was happening to me and my career endeavors. At first, no one believed me and it took time for others to truly understand or have empathy of what I was really going through with my community, then-husband, and family. My own family thought that I was being overly dramatic of my culture-shock experiences--like a script in an entertainment production. They didn't want to be around me. My then-husbands friends ran the nearby shelters (United Methodist religion shelter buildings; "No, you can't stay here." Or to my then-husband "Go elsewhere, quickly, or they are going to give primary custody of your four kids to her."). In conclusion, shelters should be an option and not the final solution to your family's housing needs.