Reply #5: In a lot of areas - including where I work - this is changing

[meganmonkey]

for example, in a rare case of cooperation between county and 'charity', a new facility has been built which is a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen. There is counseling available to help the homeless folks get what they need to get off the streets. They get help applying for the government aid that they qualify for (e.g. disability, vets benefits, low-income housing, food stamps, etc), they get help applying for and interviewing for jobs if appropriate, they get follow-up social workers for when they leave the shelter. Essentially the building this is in is county-operated, and the social workers are county employees, but the shelter staff and soup kitchen staff are employees of local nonprofits and volunteers. The groups involved in this project are also working with affordable housing coalitions in the county. The emphasis here is on long-term stability - finding a home for people that they can stay in. For example, one NGO non-profit we work with buys old houses or apartment buildings and gets families into the apartments. They pay a reasonable percentage of what they make for 'rent' which means if they make nothing, they pay nothing. The turnover rate is almost nonexistent except for those who eventually start making good enough money to be stable on their own. Meanwhile, living in the housing, they get assistance with things like making sure they have food for their kids and job searches. My agency(hunger-relief - runs the soup kitchen and distributes literally 2.5 million pounds of food per year to other programs) 'sold' part of our land to the housing org which is building 30 new units of this low-income housing (which is unheard of - NEW low-income housing?!). Our soup kitchen in the county shelter building is also housing a training program for folks from the shelter and other shelters(e.g. one for troubled teens). This whole series of projects is called 'Blueprint to End Homelessness in 10 years' and there are about a dozen groups, the city and the county, trying to make it BETTER than a 'band-aid', to make the outcomes self-sustaining and long-term. THis is happening more and more around the country - the mentality of the whole field is changing. It's good news!

On edit: so find out what your local orgs are really doing, and pick which ones to help from there!