During the Reagan years, homelessness went from a seldom-noticed social ill to a central poverty-related concern that demanded a national policy solution. In Seasons Such As These Bogard argues that it was more than the increased numbers of Americans without homes that brought the issue of homelessness into the spotlight. As Bogard’s detailed narrative history and analysis demonstrates, homelessness was also "talked into being" through the accumulated efforts of several sectors of social actors, including advocates and activists, government officials, experts, and the media. The book traces the actions of these actors over that period, when homelessness developed into a social problem in America’s two "national cities"—New York and Washington, D.C.