I used to approach human service problems head-on, believing that the shortest distance between a crisis and its solution was a straight line.

For instance, since homelessness is defined as being without a home, I thought we should just make sure plenty of affordable housing is available. Presto, no homelessness.Likewise, unemployment could be solved simply by creating jobs.

I'm beginning to realize that the direct approach may alleviate the severity of a particular crisis. But taken alone, it's as effective as trying to solve poverty by cranking up the printing press and making extra money, with nothing to back it up.

Life's a little more complicated than that, as lives of people in crisis constantly remind me.

A lot of decisions that we make as a society dovetail to affect any human service need.

Employment doesn't guarantee a great life. If it did, Salt Lake City's homeless shelters would have room to spare, instead of waiting lists. At least half of the people staying there have jobs of some type.

The real need is much more specific than that. A minimum-wage job with few or no benefits won't allow a family to get into an apartment or pay for food, clothing and utilities. Saving anything is out of the question. People who have been able to find part-time jobs are better off than they would be without them, but they, too, are still stuck in the cycle of poverty.

Utah has a tendency to brag about job creation. But many of the jobs that have been lost in the past few years are jobs with good salaries and benefits. Many of the jobs that have been created are low-paying, low-skills jobs that have little bright-future-building potential.

Even a small medical crisis, without insurance, can wipe out those first steps to independence. A simple broken arm costs hundreds of dollars. So the working poor are truly stuck.

Understandably, society is never going to pay a livable salary to someone without skills, either. Literacy and training are essential to the equation.

Free housing wouldn't guarantee success for a homeless person who is mentally ill (and an estimated one-third of the homeless are mentally ill). Without appropriate treatment and support services, someone who has severe bouts of depression or schizophrenia would not be able to maintain a home or even take care of himself.

When decisionmakers in the '70s decided to reform the mental health system by sending people out of mental hospitals into communities that had inadequate resources to deal with them, I doubt that most people saw the ensuing impact on homelessness. That was a largely unforeseen byproduct of the decision.

I can think of only one social problem that is completely resolvable with the straight-forward approach: hunger. America has adequate supplies to see that an estimated one-ninth of all Utah children - and 37 million Americans - don't go to bed hungry. What it lacks is a logistical solution to distribute that food to solve the problem.

Nearly everyone agrees that there's not enough money to take care of all the human needs. But pouring money on problems is not a viable solution, either.

Given unlimited financial support, people in crisis would not necessarily flourish. The adage is true: Buy a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

We can change a lot of lives if we'll just bear that in mind.

People need more than homes or jobs or money. Survival skills are as important as reading and writing and arithmetic. Respect for self and others is absolutely essential.

It seems to me that we've been losing ground trying to deal with social service problems. We've found a few things that don't work, but I see little evidence that Utah or America has a clear direction or will.

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An election year seems like a good time to start over, keeping what works and getting rid of what has accomplished little or nothing.

We need to set realistic priorities and then diligently apply our money, our concentration and our support services to them, sometimes one thing at a time. The scattergun approach has kept a lot of people in business, without resolving anything. We need to take a systemic approach to changing lives.

Unfortunately, some needs will probably have to go begging as we focus energy and resources on the things that we can accomplish. We need, as a society, to make some decisions instead of doing a little bit of everything in an ineffective way. In some cases, that's too bad.

But so's the status quo.

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