This monograph discusses beliefs about the causes of homelessness, and how advocacy is shaped by those beliefs. The author examines the general topic of how people understand the causes of the behavior and circumstances of others, which, he argues, have been ignored too long by advocates. In this article, some literature on this social attribution theory is introduced, and its applications for practicing advocates is considered. The author suggests an explanation for the differences in attribution of the causes of homelessness and poverty as relating to often purely implicit connections to race and stereotyped beliefs about African Americans. (Author)