On most nights, Bret Cogis opens the doors of a men's shelter in the basement of the East Liberty Presbyterian Church to about 32 men, who for a number of reasons--mental health issues, drug and alcohol addiction or poverty, among others-- are homeless and need a bed for the night.

And on extremely cold nights, like during the sub-freezing spell that swept through the region in recent weeks, Mr. Cogis, a supervisor at one of the biggest emergency shelters for homeless people in Pittsburgh, said the numbers can grow to 42 or more men, piled on bunk beds and on thin blue mattresses strewn around the church floor.

"We don't turn away anybody here," he said on a recent Friday afternoon as a group of about 20 men milled around the expansive East Liberty church waiting for the soup kitchen to open.

Mr. Cogis, who works for the East End Cooperative Ministry, and other service providers on the frontline of the fight to curb homelessness in Allegheny County, say the federal government's plan to increase funding for their efforts could significantly reduce the numbers of people they see circulating in and out of the shelter system for the first time in many years.

Allegheny County is one of 23 communities in the nation that will receive a much-needed boost in federal funding for human services this year, specifically for a new initiative to move homeless people with little or no income--particularly those with children-- into permanent housing as fast as possible.

"This is the kind of funding we really need but have never had before," said Adrienne Walnoha, executive director of Community Human Services, an Oakland-based organization that provides a range of services for the homeless and working poor.

This year, Allegheny County is slated to receive $14.5 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for programs that deal with homelessness. The county's Department of Human Services will receive about $2 million more than it did last year, including about $840,000 for a pilot program to quickly rehouse homeless individuals and families with children.

Much of the new funding will trickle down the system through Community Human Services, a county contractor. The agency plans to invest the funds in additional housing stock, a critical component of the county's 10-year plan to end homelessness.

"For once, we have the ability to go into the shelter system and start identifying families that we can move into permanent housing and sustain them while we help them work through some of their problems," said Ms. Walnoha, a member of the Allegheny County Homeless Alliance, which plays a major advisory role in the county's efforts to end homelessness.

"Until now, much of the funding we received was for rehousing people who can support themselves once we put them in a house," she said. But the problem with that approach, she added, "it's limited."

Service providers who deal with homeless people agree that people become homeless for a number of reasons.

And so, they argue, any earnest attempt to help homeless people must not only address housing, but also provide a spectrum of services that can help homeless people begin to deal with the conditions that contributed to making them homeless in the first place.

Robert Arture, a Vietnam War veteran, had post-traumatic stress from the war and trouble readjusting to civilian life when he returned to his native Pittsburgh in 1981. That drove him into a cycle of depression and drug and alcohol abuse, which sucked him into a life on the streets and in shelters for years.

"I lived with my mother for about a year when I came back, but I started having emotional problems and drinking and using drugs, and it wasn't long before I was on the streets. No one wanted anything to do with me and my problems," said Mr. Arture, who is one of about 3,000 people receiving services in a number of county programs for homeless people.

For years, Mr. Arture, a father of two teenagers, rotated in and out of shelters, friends' homes and abandoned buildings and street corners around the city until he enrolled in one of the outreach programs offered by Community Human Services about 10 years ago.

Since then, he said, life has been a roller coaster of sorts, as he tried to face down his addiction and settle down long enough to give his children a sense of stability.

During those years, Mr. Arture, 54, lived at Wood Street Commons, a Downtown shelter, and in a number of temporary houses mostly in Lawrenceville. Community Human Services found him a three-bedroom red brick house in south Oakland early this year and helps him with the $700 a month rent.

Now sober and drug-free, Mr. Arture regularly attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and spends much of his time doing volunteering work.

With a combined 10 years of military service in the Army and the Navy, Mr. Arture depends on food stamps, a monthly bus pass from Community Human Services and $1,000 a month in Social Security Disability payments.

In a human services field where positive outcomes and happy endings are rare and incremental at best, Mr. Arture is by all accounts a success story. But he also is an example of the model approach that Ms. Walnoha and other service providers say is critical to tackling homelessness.

"We could be on track to seeing a substantial reduction to the pressure on the family shelter system," said Michael Lindsay, housing program administrator for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.

According to "point-in-time" field counts, Allegheny County recorded 2,011 homeless children and adults as of last May.

With the federal government's injection of new funding into programs for the homeless here and in other communities across the country, that number is more likely to go down significantly, Mr. Lindsay said, because of the capability to increase housing stock and case management services.