and family or who can afford to rent a hotel room on a temporary basis? In some states, the homeless are defined as the people on the street who, in seeking shelter, have no alternative but to obtain shelter from a private or public agency. Others simply define homelessness as the condition when the person or families do not have their own place to live in. Yet others view them as "those people who hang around downtown and go through the rubbish cans." Some take a broader view and feel it should also include people who are evicted or have left their families because of difficulties. Still others define homelessness as being without shelter, but this definition reduces the seriousness of the issue and excludes a number of people deprived of "homes." Unfortunately, while these examples may be accurate in defining a certain type or category of the homeless population, they do not delineate its parameters. That is, the current definitions or classifications of the homeless are of limited use, because at one extreme the homeless are defined a
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