Throughout history, there have always been people who were forced to live out of doors, with no permanent address and no means to afford any type of "room." In the 1980s, though, the issue of homelessness became a significant social issue. The country's homeless population soared during that time. It is difficult to know just how many people were homeless at this time, because, by definition, homeless people have no addresses where they can be contacted and therefore counted. Some sources estimated that two or three million Americans were without housing at the height of the problem, although more recent calculations say that the number was closer to 600-700,000. The wide variance in numbers is due to the fact that different organizations have used different methods to determine the number of homeless people. Counting the homeless has always been done by mathematical formulae that try to...