Homeless children confront abject poverty and experience a constellation of risks that are having a devastating impact on their well-being. This paper reviews research linking homelessness among children to hunger and poor nutrition, health problems and lack of health and mental health care, developmental delays, psychological problems, and academic underachievement. In every category explored, children growing up in shelters and hotels are worse off as a group when compared with their permanently housed peers of the same age. Yet homeless children continue to be warehoused in uninhabitable shelters and hotels for excessive periods of time. Since the problems associated with homelessness have only recently been recognized, only the short-term consequences have been examined; little attention is being paid to the long-term trauma to these children. The social costs of producing a lost generation of children, which will include increased costs for criminal and juvenile justice, medical care, and special education programs, are likely to exceed substantially the costs of providing sufficient amounts of permanent housing to end the crisis of homelessness. Our cities and our nation must develop means to defray the enormous societal and human costs of homelessness. A list of 20 references is appended. (AF)