This book enhances our understanding of homelessness in the United States by approaching the problem from structural and historical perspectives. Hoch and Slayton shed light on the "institutional roots" of homelessnes by documenting how the physical destruction of single room occupancy (SRO) hotels in the name of urban renewal undermined viable social support networks among the unmarried poor and led to the dearth of low-income housing in American cities. This approach, the authors note, contrasts sharply with the individualistic perspective of journalists, public service providers and professional caretakers, who use anecdotal evidence to describe the circumstances of people mired in situations beyond their control: working-class families faced with employment loss due to economic restructuring; young, single mothers with little education and with few friends or relatives to turn to for help; and unattached persons afflicted by alcoholism or various physical or mental handicaps. In all cases, homelessnes is portrayed by these sympathetic observers "not as an individual problem with bad social consequences, but as a social problem that overwhelms individuals" (p. 3). This focus on individual vulnerabilities, Hoch and Slayton argue, is misbegotten, for it draws attention away from the social-structural foundations of the problem and encourages the short-term, ad hoc policy of shelterization, which simply reinforces the dependency of those suffering from acute shelter deprivation. Beginning with an historical case study of Chicago, Hoch and Slayton explore the social world of the single urban poor, arguing that the homeless and near-homeless of the preWorld War II era were neither anomic nor pathological, as was often charged, but were integrated into an organized, complex subculture. At the top of the social order of the "old" homeless were the Hoboes, migratory industrial workers engaged in a variety of skilled and unskilled occupations. Next were the Tramps, single men and women involved in illegal and extralegal income-generating pursuits, such as theft and pan-