STREET CHILDREN IN NORTH AND LATIN-AMERICA - PRELIMINARY DATA FROM PROYECTO-ALTERNATIVOS IN TEGUCIGALPA AND SOME COMPARISONS WITH THE US CASE

The decade of the 1980s witnessed a dramatic transformation in the cha racter of homelessness in the United States and elsewhere in the devel oped world. Whereas in previous decades the U.S. homeless were predomi nantly older, largely white, broken-down alcoholic men (or at least we re stereotypified as such), today a sizable fraction are women and chi ldren. Indeed, women, children, and youth now comprise more than three -eighths of the total homeless population of the United States (Wright 1989). As the U.S. homeless have come to be comprised of proportional ly more women and children, so have they come more and more to resembl e the street populations of the Third World, where homelessness, famil y disorganization, exploitation, and abandonment of children have beco me increasingly important problems during the past decade.