<p>Homelessness in America has grown from a minor problemin isolated areas of a few big cities into a near epidemic.Today, scarcely any American city of any appreciable sizelacks homeless people. Homeless shelters and programshave become as essential and as commonplace as policeprotection or water and sewage treatment. What to dofor, with, or about the homeless is a nagging and complexsocial policy issue debated at all levels of government.<p><i>Address Unknown</i> emphasizes the large-scale socialand economic forces that have priced an increasingly largesegment of the urban poor completely out of the housingmarket. Seen in this light, the problem of homelessness isthat there are too many extremely poor people competing fortoo few aff ordable housing units. Th e nation would be facinga formidable homelessness problem even if there were noalcoholics, no drug addicts, no deinstitutionalized mentallyill people--no personal pathologies of any kind. Rather thana choice, homelessness is the result of housing markets thathave very little to off er to extremely poor people.<p>The plight of the homeless is very visible, and <i>AddressUnknown</i> is one of the fi rst major investigative studies intothe nature and multiple causes of the problem. Wrightconsiders demographic, economic, sociological, andsocial policy antecedents of homelessness. A hallmark isthe delineation of the range of factors involved, includingdeinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, urban renewal,the decrease in lower-skilled jobs, changing political priorities,and bureaucratic obstacles to providing existingsocial services to the homeless population.<p><i>James D. Wright</i> is a professor in the department of sociologyat the University of Central Florida. He has published seventeenbooks including <i>Armed and Considered Dangerous</i> and <i>Under theGun</i> as well as many journal articles. His current research interestsinclude violence, urban poverty and inequality, health and thehomeless population, and the "divorce reform" movement.