美国非营利组织帮助无家可归者结束流浪生活

US Nonprofit Working to End Homelessness 美国非营利组织帮助无家可归者结束流浪生活

As many homeless shelters across the U.S. remain at or near capacity, the country faces complicated challenges.

In his fiscal¹ 2017 budget, President Obama proposed spending $11 billion over the next 10 years to fight family homelessness.

Gregory Talley used to sleep in a park, at an airport, or under a bridge. The 50-year-old has been homeless for more than 10 years.

"It is hard. It’s hard to live homeless. You filled every day trying to find out where you are going to get something to eat. If I hadn’t found wonderful Fairfax County Kennedy Shelter, I wouldn't know where I would be by now.I might be dead," Talley said.

The Kennedy Shelter is one of the facilities New Hope Housing provides for homeless families and individuals in the Washington suburbs.

Pam Michell has dedicated² her life to making the lives of this vulnerable population better as executive director of the nonprofit organization. 

Felt epiphany in Africa

“I went to Africa in 1985. And I saw an immense amount of poverty, but I saw so much hope. And I wondered what I was doing at home in my middle-class American life and decided³ that I should try to do something that would bring hope to people," Michell said.

"It is convenient, homelessness just happened to be what was around me. So I picked that,” she added.

When Michell began working with New Hope Housing 25 years ago, its three shelters had about 80 beds. Now, it has 350 beds and serves about 1,500 homeless people every year.

Michell has expanded the program beyond just providing beds for the night.

“We do outreach, we do prevention, we do permanent housing, we do transitional housing. We have an education program with all sorts of different things to move people to end their homelessness,” she said.

According to 2015 government data, more than a half-million people in the United States are homeless on any given night.

While the scarcity⁴ of affordable⁵ housing can be the main reason people experience homelessness, Michell said New Hope is offering them the services they need to change their lives and succeed.

Program to transform the homeless

"Our Out of Poverty program is not just about money," Michell said. "It's about you could be spiritually poor, you could be relationship poor ... you could be educationally poor. So it is focusing on how you get out of this poverty that has brought you to being homeless and find prosperity.”

The program tries to teach the shelter residents self-reliance and work values, and includes courses on planning and personal responsibility.

“I learned I still have opportunity to change it and I can change it," said shelter resident Lewis Webster. "It is just about going forth⁶ in doing necessary work to do it. I mean if you really want better, you would do better and that's the frame of mind of me now.”

Webster, who has spent time in jail, said he is confident he'll become a productive member of the community when he leaves the shelter and into a place of his own, in a month.

1 fiscal   

adj.财政的，会计的，国库的，国库岁入的

参考例句：

• The increase of taxation is an important fiscal policy.增税是一项重要的财政政策。
• The government has two basic strategies of fiscal policy available.政府有两个可行的财政政策基本战略。

2 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

3 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

4 scarcity   

n.缺乏，不足，萧条

参考例句：

• The scarcity of skilled workers is worrying the government.熟练工人的缺乏困扰着政府。
• The scarcity of fruit was caused by the drought.水果供不应求是由于干旱造成的。

5 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

6 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。