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The article discusses several studies on homeless women. Homeless women who seek shelter with their children should not be subjected to trauma produced by mentally ill people. The difficulty arises during initial shelter or program intake procedures in determining whether a woman is psychiatrically impaired. If homeless women with dependent children and homeless women without dependent children are found to be two separate types of homeless women, then the presence or absence of homeless children can be used as an initial discriminating factor in determining different types of service and shelter arrangements. If women with children and women without children are found to be similar, then differences in shelter populations remain an artifact of existing shelter policies. Shelter-based research in New York previously had provided initial information about homeless women who were separated from their dependent children. These women, many of whom had grown up separated from their own parents in foster care, continued ongoing contact with their children and consequently defied the traditionally held view of a close association of disaffiliation with homelessness.

Homeless families are a rising proportion of the contemporary homeless population. However, no data have heretofore documented a profile of sheltered homeless families over time. Data collected in St. Louis from 1983 to 1988 indicate that homeless families are likely to be young, minimally educated, female-headed minority families with one or two preschool children. The emergence of these women and children as the dominant population of homeless families is discussed in the context of the increasing loss of affordable housing in St. Louis, Missouri, and the inability of mothers who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children to pay market-rate rents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the homelessness policy in the U.S. It provides a socio-demographic portrait of the contemporary homeless in the nation, a discussion of the structural causes of homelessness, and outlines local and federal responses to the problem. A probability sample of homeless persons revealed that approximately 567,000 to 600,000 persons are estimated to be homeless, and other studies reveal that the heterogenous homeless population is younger with increasing proportions of women and youth. The structural causes of homelessness include shortage of affordable housing, poverty and unemployment, deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and inadequacies in public welfare.