About this Book

Many people tend to lump all the homeless together into a single, faceless category. It's easy to see why. We seldom actually hear the voices of the homeless. When we see them on television or read about them in newspapers, the homeless often blur into a single group of poor, desperate people with little initiative and few aspirations.

Fearful people turn aside when they see a homeless person. Youths harass them, thieves rob them, psychopaths burn them. Only recently have they appeared in large enough numbers to enter the public consciousness as a group apart -- part pity and part fear. The curious wonder who they are, how they became homeless, why they live on the streets, and if perhaps they themselves may one day become one of them. But for most people, the homeless remain as they have always been -- essentially invisible -- most of them passing their days unseen by the rest of us.

These are people many of us would prefer not to know -- "losers, " people down on their luck. They also rootless, unwanted, very much alone and afraid. And who of us has not experience these very same feelings?

This new and revised volume presents coverage of books, magazine articles, congressional documents and other materials up to 1999. The entries are conveniently grouped under the following headings:

-- 1. General; Legislation; Social Issues

-- 2. Housing Policy; Shelters

-- 3. Homeless Children

-- 4. Mentally Ill

-- 5. Urban Poverty

-- 6. Welfare; Health Issues

-- 7. Alcohol and Drug Abuse