Evidence of their clout is clear. Before a hallway crowd at the Massachusetts Statehouse this month, Ray Hammond lavished religious language on a group diverse enough to include Catholic nuns, Episcopal priests and the pastor of a gay-lesbian congregation. In terms of finding solutions to the housing crisis, the faithful's initiatives have focused on bricks and mortar. Faith groups aren't trying this year to solve the social causes of homelessness, however, largely because they don't agree on what those causes are. But it's economic realities.
People have no social network to fall back on. . . .
It would be unjust to see individual moral failures as the single greatest cause of homelessness.