This research examines a service delivery system for homeless youths that was created by a public-private partnership between the business community, nonprofit service providers, and governmental entities. The article opens with a brief introduction to homelessness, a review of the literature on the material lives of the poor, and a discussion of public-private alliances. A description of the ethnographic method employed in this study follows, with a concentration on the locally appropriate roles assumed by the researcher. The results examine the genesis of this public-private initiative and the development of the service delivery model, its implementation, and its first systemwide review. The final section closes with lessons learned from this particular alliance that may have implications for the development of other public-private partnerships.
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