Charles Darwin proposed the theory of natural choice, and Herbert Spencer paraphrased that theory into the phrase "survival of the fittest."

I like one of the Ruby-red Bull commercials equally a style of explaining what Darwin meant. In the ad, two gazelles are talking, with a lion lurking in the background. I is drinking a Red Balderdash. "That won't enable you to outrun that lion," says the one. "Don't have to," says the other. "I only demand to outrun you."

One mode of looking at Housing Forward is that its mission is to take care of the losers in this high-stakes, competitive game chosen American society. Kim and Anthony are two of the homeless people the nonprofit has gotten off the street and into an flat, only the funding that subsidizes their rent is about to finish. The Housing Forrard model assumes people living on the street need a handout for a while to recover, and then a hand up to find jobs with the goal of getting dorsum to living independently.

In other words, if life is like an body of water and you're drowning, what Housing Forrad does is throw y'all a life preserver to help you catch your breath, merely after a brusk time they insist that y'all offset swimming on your own or, if you don't know how, they will teach you lot, but either style eventually they will take the life ring away and then they tin can throw it to another person who is going under.

That model, declared Housing Forward's executive manager, Lynda Schueler, has been successful seventy% of the fourth dimension.

The problem for Kim and Anthony is that they're among the 30% for whom the model doesn't work. It'southward every bit if even when they try to permit get of the device keeping them adrift in gild to swim on their own, the weight they're carrying drags them down no thing how hard they try.

Fifty-fifty in the Housing Forwards model, clients need a sure level of "fitness" or resilience in order to benefit from the hand upwards.

Take Kim, for case. She'south in her 30s and has never had a task. In addition if she doesn't get her medication on time every day, she falls apart. Whenever she's in social situations, similar a job for example, her anxiety level soars and she has to go away from the oversupply. Good luck finding employment.

Anthony had jobs before condign homeless, but correct now he's carrying several burdens that make his chances of outrunning the lion slim. For i, he has his own mental-health issues. Another is that he has a felony drug conviction on his record, which prevents him from getting many jobs.

And then a year ago while he was driving a friend'southward motorcar, he was pulled over because of a tail light non working. When the officer ran his license number, he found there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest, a warrant Anthony didn't know nearly. He insists he's not guilty of the break-in charge, but the public defender assigned to him lacks either the time or desire to do the work required to go the judge to throw the case out.

And so fifty-fifty though he is talented and experienced in working with computers, when he applies for a chore at a business organization that requires he handle money — Best Purchase, for example — the burglary charge ends the interview.

Housing Forward is limited in the amount of coin they tin provide. In addition to hefty hire subsidies, they have given the couple Link and Ventra Cards but at this signal the nonprofit has no money in their budget for medication or electricity.

Financial help from family is limited and desultory. Friends take given the pair literally thousands of dollars only that well is first to run dry.

They say America is the state of opportunity. For many, of course, it is. But style back in 1962 Michael Harrington published a book titled, The Other America, which points out that we're not just a place where you tin can become anything you desire to be.

Many of you have volunteered at a Housing Forrad shelter and vote for political candidates who hope to assistance the poor. Yous've helped make the glass lxx% full. My question is how far are we willing to go? How much are we willing to requite to assist Kim and Anthony and the other folks in the 30% to enable them to just stay afloat?

When some people see them panhandling on an expressway ramp and holler, "Become a task!" they reveal their cluelessness about "the other America."

Are we willing to brand information technology office of our mission statement to help our neighbors like Kim and Anthony?

Tom Holmes writes a column for the Forest Park Review, a Growing Community Media publication.

Tom's been writing nigh religion – broadly divers – for years in the Journal. Tom's experience as a retired minister and his curiosity about matters of organized religion will make for an e'er insightful exploration... More by Tom Holmes