ABSTRACT
In the last decade the reappearance in the United States of widespread homelessness has been coupled with a high visibility of mentally ill homeless persons in urban centres. This apparent association between homelessness and mental illness has stimulated an intense and ongoing debate on the contribution of mental illness to homelessness. Although mentally ill persons were noticeable among the homeless in prior historical periods (Deutsch 1937; Grob 1973; Rothman 1971), the relationship between the two rarely generated public discourse of a similar scale or intensity. Perhaps a historical precedent can be found in the campaign for asylums in the nineteenth century, when many mentally ill persons were housed in jails. That controversy, however, centred on the deplorable treatment of the mentally ill rather than on the causes of homelessness.
