ABSTRACT
The analyzed data, during the year 2000, both qualitative and quantitative, were drawn from case records of clients who received services from a large homeless shelter located in a predominantly rural region in the midwestern United States. The primary reason given for being homeless was financial problems. This finding makes sense in terms of why people become homeless in rural as well as urban areas. Even though only 10.6 percent of the rural homeless claimed they were homeless because of a disability, the number in the sample with a disability is extremely high. A number of important implications follow from the high number of rural homeless people with emotional disabilities. The deinstitutionalization movement has doubtless played a role in the increasing number of rural homeless people. The variable that was most commonly associated with the rural homeless was family violence. Physical abuse was the most common form of family violence experienced by the rural homeless.
