Homeless families and children.

Public concern about homelessness in the United States has increased in recent years. A late 1995 Gallup poll found that 86% of Americans feel sympathy for the homeless, and 33% report that they feel more sympathy now than they did five years ago. According to the same poll, one reason for this apparent increase in sympathy is that 17% of Americans, primarily women and young adults, believe that they could become homeless.1 The fact that these groups are concerned about homelessness reflects, in part, two decades of increases in the visibility of homeless women and children in the United States. Published reports suggest that most homeless families with children are headed by single women between the ages of 26 and 30 who have never been married and have two children.2