Helping America's Homeless: Emergency Shelter or Affordable Housing? by Martha Burt, Laudan Y. Aron and Edgar Lee (with Jesse Valente); Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press; 2001. 366 pages; paper back; $29.50.

In Helping America's Homeless, Martha Burt and colleagues draw on a wealth of data from the 1996 National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (NSHAPC) to propose potential approaches and strategies towards the ultimate elimination of homelessness within the Unites States. NSHAPC represents the most comprehensive national survey of homeless individuals (including extremely low-income consumers of social services such as food pantries and soup kitchens) ever conducted in the United States. Information regarding substance use, mental health problems, childhood abuse, neglect, and family environment as well as detailed housing histories was collected from clients utilizing homeless assistance programs in urban, suburban, and rural settings across the nation. Aimed primarily at individuals seeking to influence public policy on homelessness, this book offers an exhaustive treatment of the subject.

The book begins with a historical overview of homelessness in the Unites States from the late 1800s (in which groups of single men migrated for work across country following patterns of industrial development) up to and including the mid-1990s in which the Clinton Administration first introduced the concept of a "continuum of care," a concept which changed the way in which Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocated its funding of homeless services. Other chapters examine results from the analysis of NSHAPC data. The data are discussed within the context of changes that have occurred in public policy from 1987-when the Urban Institute conducted an earlier national survey on homelessness-through 1996-when the current NSHAPC survey was conducted. Each chapter includes detailed tables and extensive footnotes explaining the analytic techniques used and suggesting caveats to keep in mind when interpreting survey data. "Concluding Thoughts" summarize the results of each chapter and present implications for future policy revisions.

This comprehensive text has innumerable strengths and very few weaknesses. Although the less analytically focused reader may get lost in the highly detailed presentations of subgroup analyses and cross-tabulations, the authors' scholarly writing style retains a sensitivity to the individuals represented within the numerous tables and figures. The concluding chapter revisits broad issues discussed at the outset of the text to address how the NSHAPC data have helped to shed light on (or have raised further questions regarding) the roles that individual and structural factors play in perpetuating homelessness within the United States.

This text provides a thoughtful, data-driven review of ways in which policy efforts have influenced homelessness in the U.S. throughout the 1990s. Potential directions for future research are clearly discussed throughout the text, providing a blueprint for the further study of the epidemiology of homelessness and of the various factors that may interact to set vulnerable individuals on a trajectory towards unstable housing and homeless service utilization. Helping America's Homeless is thus an invaluable resource for social science researchers and policy makers alike.