Friday, July 20, 2007

Want a solution to homelessness? Give them homes.

I am drawn to people who, when faced with a common problem, invent an uncommon solution. Malcolm Gladwell is one such person (read Blink and The Tipping Point), and he'll most assuredly pop up in this blog from time to time. When somebody is jawing in my ear about how society coddles the homeless and we should instead just cut them off entirely (because that will end homelessness for sure!), I often find myself rereading Gladwell's Feb. 13, 2006 article about how to end what he terms "chronically homeless"--those who really cost society the most. This article presents the challenge--do you really want to solve the problem, or do you simply want to wax nostalgic about bootstraps and whine about how Americans have lost sight of the ideals on which this country was supposedly built?

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