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zeuszor
In case you were wondering: the man who replaced me was taken in through a friend-of-a-friend kind of thing; he was not taken in from a local shelter. Same with the woman referred to in the Lockwood cotton-candy piece...she was displaced and taken in by TFI, but not through a shelter. She knew somebody that knewsomebody that knew Ole. Same with Frank Bono. Thet were all taken in because of mutual friends, NOT because TFI wanted to take somebody in off the street.
This is part of why the Dallas Project was so naive. People who really fit the definition of street people are usually dealing with other issues besides economic displacement--most of the time it is drug addiction, and in a significant number of cases it is severe mental illness, like schizophrenia. Often, it is both. People like that are best helped by people with special training through programs established for that purpose.
The kind of people that someplace like Trinity could help are people like the ones you describe--folks that are otherwise functional but that happen to be at loose ends for one reason or another. I think it's commendable if Trinity helps people like that, and I know of many other churches that perform similar things. However, it has nothing to do with addressing then entrenched societal problems that result in poverty and homelessness. It is bogus for Ole to act like he has started a new social order or that he is going to foment a revolution in the social welfare system. That's just more of him jumping up and down and shouting, "Look at me! Look at me!"