Housing First is intended to quickly connect people experiencing homelessness to permanent housing “without preconditions such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements.” Yet, it has the unfortunate result of trapping people in a cycle of dependency.

In a recent conversation, Jennifer Johnson, a former lawyer turned child care cooperative director, told me, “Many of the women (she) represented were good mothers. They loved and desired to parent their children. However, they just couldn’t figure out how to work and pay for child care.” Jennifer’s story represents similar conversations that I have had with pregnancy care center directors, child care centers and nonprofit leaders.

When Good Samaritan Health Centers of Gwinnett went bankrupt in 2005, they knew they’d have to make some changes to their free clinic model. Dr. Greg Lang, Executive Director, explains, “As a healthcare center, we have to use highly-educated, licensed providers. We can’t rely on volunteers, like many other nonprofits are able to do. Charging for services became a financial necessity.”

A strategy is not a vision, a mission, or a set of goals. It is a plan that provides a clear diagnosis of a problem, a guiding policy to address it, and a coherent set of mutually supportive actions.

Amy Sherman offers both historical and contemporary examples of sustainable community engagement from which charity workers and churches can gain inspiration and insight to bring peace to their local communities.