About the Authors

Martha Burt is the director of the Social Services Research Program at the Urban Institute. She has been involved in research and evaluation pertaining to a wide variety of populations and issues. Her work has included the first national survey of homeless individuals, conducted in 1987 and reported in America’s Homeless: Numbers, Characteristics, and Programs that Serve Them (Publisher, 1989). She is the author of a number of books and reports on homelessness, including Over the Edge: The Growth of Homelessness in the 1980s (1992), and both editions of Practical Methods for Counting Homeless People: A Manual for State and Local Jurisdictions (1992 and 1994). She is also the author of the federal report based on the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients, Homelessness: Programs and the People They Serve (Urban Institute, 1999).

Laudan Y. Aron is a research associate at the Urban Institute’s Labor and Social Policy Center. Her work has covered a wide range of social welfare issues, including child welfare and child support; health, disability, and family planning; education; employment and training; and homelessness. She is currently studying health insurance coverage among child support–eligible children and is working on a national evaluation of the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act. Prior to joining the Urban Institute, Ms. Aron worked as a senior associate in the economic analysis and evaluation practice area of Lewin-ICF.

Edgar K. Lee was a researcher at the Urban Institute, where he specialized in issues related to homelessness, workforce development programs, and low-skill labor markets, when this book was written. He is currently pursuing graduate studies at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and is a researcher at the Civil Rights Project at Harvard Law School.

Jesse Valente, now at Abt Associates in Boston, was a research assistant at the Urban Institute from 1998 through 2000. During that time he conducted much of the basic analysis for this book. He also worked on Homelessness: Programs and the People They Serve (Urban Institute, 1999), and participated in a variety of other research projects focused on welfare reform. His primary research is in the area of poverty policy.

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