Homeless people have been found to exhibit high levels of personal disability (mental illness, substance abuse), extreme degrees of social estrangement, and deep poverty. Each of these conditions poses unique housing problems, which are discussed here. In the 1980s, the number of poor people has increased and the supply  of low-income housing has dwindled, these trends provide the background against which the homelessness problem has unfolded. Homelessness is indeed a housing problem, first and foremost, but the characteristics of the homeless are such as to make their housing problems atypical.

The question of whether homelessness is a housing problem is perhaps best approached by asking, If homelessness is not a housing problem, then what kind of problem might it be? Most agree that the number of homeless people in the cities increased significantly in the 1980s. Was there any corresponding decline in the availability of low-cost housing? What besides a dwindling low-income hous- ing supply would account for the trend? Even if one concludes that homelessness is not just a housing problem, there seems to be little doubt that inadequate low-cost housing must have something to do with the problem, and it is useful to ask just what that “something” is.