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The Street-Level Solution A.When I was growing up, one of my father’s favorite sayings (borrowed from the humorist Will Rogers) was: “It isn’t what we don’t know that causes the trouble: it’s what we think we know that just ain’t so.” One of the main insights to be taken from the 100 000 Homes Campaign and its strategy to end chronic homelessness is that, until recently, our society thought it understood the nature of homelessness, but it didn’t.B.That led to a series of mistaken assumptions about why people become homeless and what they need. Many of the errors in our homelessness policies have stemmed from the conception that the homeless are a homogeneous group. It’s only in the past 15 years that organizations like Common Ground, and others, have taken a street-level view of the problem—distinguishing the “ episodically homeless” from the “chronically homeless” in order to understand their needs at an individual level. This is why we can now envisage a different approach and get better results.C.Most readers expressed support for the effort, although a number were skeptical, and a few utterly dismissive, about the chances of long-term homeless people adapting well to housing. This is to be expected; it’s hard to imagine what we haven’t yet seen. As Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, one of the major obstacles in any effort to advance systemic change is the “incredulity of men,” which is to say that people “do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.” Most of us have witnessed homeless people on the streets for decades. Few have seen formerly homeless people after they have been housed successfully. We don’t have reference points for that story. So we generalize from what we know or think we know.D.But that can be misleading, even to experts. When I asked Rosanne Haggerty, founder of Common Ground, which currently operates 2310 units of supportive housing (with 552 more under construction), what had been her biggest surprise in this work, she replied: “ Fifteen years ago, I would not have believed that people who had been so broken and stuck in homelessness could thrive to the degree that they do in our buildings. ” And Becky Kanis, the campaign’s director, commented: “There is this sense in our minds that someone who’s on the streets is almost in their DNA different from someone who has a house. The campaign is creating a first-hand experience for many people that that is really not the case. ”E.One of the startling realizations that I had while researching this column is that anybody could become like a homeless person—all it takes is a traumatic(创伤的)brain injury. A bicycle fall, a car accident, a slip on the ice, or if you’re a soldier, a head wound—and your life could become unrecognizable. James O’ Connell, a doctor who has been treating the most vulnerable homeless people on the streets of Boston for 25 years, estimates that 40 percent of the long-term homeless people he’s met had such a brain injury. “For many it was a head injury prior to the time they became homeless.” he said. “They became unpredictable. They’d have mood swings, fits of explosive behavior. They couldn’t hold onto their jobs. Drinking made them feel better. They’d end up on the streets. ”F.Once homeless people return to housing, they’re in a much better position to rebuild their lives. But it’s important to note that housing alone is not enough. As with many complex social problems, when you get through the initial crisis, you have another problem to solve which is no less challenging. But it is a better problem.G.Over the past decade. O’Connell has seen this happen. “I spend half my time on the streets or in the hospital and the other half making house calls to people who lived for years on the streets.” he said. "So from a doctor’s point of view it’s a delightful switch, but it’s not as if putting someone in housing is the answer to addressing all of their problems. It’s the first step.”H.Once in housing, formerly homeless people can become isolated and lonely. If they’ve lived on the streets for years, they may have acquired a certain standing as well as a sense of pride in their survival skills. Now indoors, those aspects of their identity may be stripped away. Many also experience a profound disorientation at the outset. “If you’re homeless for more than six months, you kind of lose your bearings,” says Haggerty. "Existence becomes not about overcoming homelessness but about finding food, begging, looking for a job to survive another day. The whole process of how you define stability gets reordered.”I.Many need regular, if not continuous, support with mental health problems, addictions and illnesses-and, equally important, assistance in the day-to-day challenges of life, reacquainting with family, building relationships with neighbors, finding enjoyable activities or work, managing finances, and learning how to eat healthy food.J.For some people, the best solution is to live in a communal(集体)residence, with special services. This isn’t available everywhere, however. In Boston, for example- homeless people tend to be scattered in apartments throughout the city.K.Common Ground’s large residences in New York offer insight into the possibilities for change when homeless people have a rich array of supports. In addition to more traditional social services, residents also make use of communal gardens, classes in things like cooking, yoga, theatre and photography, and job placement. Last year, 188 formerly homeless tenants in four of Common Ground’s residences, found jobs.L.Because the properties have many services and are well-managed. Haggerty has found posthousing problems to be surprisingly rare. In the past 10 years, there have been only a handful of incidents of quarrels between tenants. There is very little graffiti(涂鸦)or vandalism(破坏). And the turnover is almost negligible. In the Prince George Hotel in New York, which is home to 208 formerly homeless people and 208 low-income tenants, the average length of tenancy is close to seven years. (All residents pay 30 percent of their income for rent; for the formerly homeless, this comes out of their government benefits.) When people move on, it is usually because they’ve found a preferable apartment.M.“Tenants also want to participate in shaping the public areas of the buildings,” said Haggerty. “They formed a gardening committee. They want a terrace on the roof. Those are things I didn’t count on.” The most common tenant demand “People always want more storage space-but that’s true of every New Yorker,” she adds. “In many ways, we’re a lot like a normal apartment building. Our tenants look like anyone else.”N.As I mentioned, homelessness is a catch-all for a variety of problems. A number of readers asked whether the campaign will address family homelessness, which has different causes and requires a different solution. I’ve been following some of the promising ideas emerging to address and prevent family homelessness. Late in 2011, I’ll explore these ideas in a column. For now, I’ll conclude with an update on the 100000 Homes Campaign. Since Tuesday, New Orleans and a few other communities have reported new results. The current count of people housed is 7043. Tenants in Common Ground’s residences all want more room for storage.()

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Millions of Americans are entering their 60s and are more concerned than ever about retirement. They know they need to save, but how much And what exactly are they saving for to spend more time ___36___ the grandkids, go traveling, or start another career It turns out that husbands and wives max have ___37___ different ideas about the subject. The deepest divide is in the way spouses envisage their lifestyle in their later years. Fidelity Investments Inc. found 41 percent of the 500 couples it surveyed ___38___ on whether both or at least one spouse will work in retirement. Wives are generally right regarding their husbands’ retirement age, but men ___39___ the age their wives will be when they stop working. And husbands are slightly more ___40___ about their standard of living than wives are. Busy juggling(穷于应对)careers and families, most couples don’t take time to sit down , ___ 41___ together, and think about what they would like to do 5, 10 or 20 years from now. They ___42___ they are on the same page, but the ___43___ is they have avoided even talking about it. If you are self-employed or in a job that doesn’t have a standard retirement age, you may be more apt to delay thinking about these issues. It is often a ___44___ retirement date that provides the catalyst(催化剂)to start planning. Getting laid off or accepting an early-retirement ___45___ can force your hand. But don’t wait until you get a severance(遣散费)check to begin planning. A) assume B) confidential C) disagree D) formula E) forthcoming H) observe I) optimistic J) package F) illustrating G) mysteriously K) radically L) reality M) separately N ) spoiling O) underestimate 38()

A. assume
B. confidential
C. disagree
D. formula
E. forthcoming
F. observe
G. optimistic
H. package
I. illustrating
J. mysteriously
K. radically
L. reality
M. separately
N. spoiling
O. underestimate

(46) Technology has made it easy to cross national frontiers physically, but there has been no invention of new mental habits to enable people to cope with foreigners in a new way. For that to happen, the habits of tourists will have to alter. The hidden god of travel is still Karl Baedeker, even though he died in 1859. His guidebooks have a permanent pattern, making travel essentially a matter of sightseeing, looking at places rather than at people. (47) His achievement was to find sights that could be guaranteed to be there all the time, to be clearly identifiable, dated and classified according to the amount of admiration they deserved. He made visits to old monuments and to art museums--the staple diet of the traveler, drawing attention away from the living inhabitants. To this day, tourism is a course in history, architecture, aesthetics, and the appreciation of hotels and food. (48) The cult of "sights" has grown so much that most foreign (organized) travel involves virtually no contact with the natives, beyond those who specialize in catering for tourists. The business traveler tends to meet mainly people in his own profession. How different from the itinerary of a modern package holiday is this program, drawn up by an Englishman, Sir Francis Head, in 1852, before the guide books told tourists what to do. In Paris, he visited the municipal pawnshop, the asylum for blind youths, where Braille, still unknown in England, was being used, a prison, an orphanage for abandoned children, the Salpetriere old people’s home, the morgue, the national printing works, the military academy, the national assembly, the public laundry, and finally he attended/he lectures at the Conservatory for Arts and Crafts. The rise of bureaucratic officialdom soon stopped that kind of curiosity; but perhaps today a new openness will allow it to express itself again. In former times, the attraction of foreign travel was often that people did abroad what they dared not do at home, which is shy foreign countries won reputations for sexual debauchery. (The French considered England as debauched as the English visitors to the Folies Bergeres imagined the French to be. ) (49) But now that a visit to France is no longer a dangerous adventure, and that an international uniformity exists in so many of the goods and facilities the tourist encounters, where is the excitement, and where are the new discoveriesIt is to be found in the people. (50) The foreignness in foreign travel today must come mainly from meeting individuals whom one would not normally meet at home. (47) His achievement was to find sights that could be guaranteed to be there all the time, to be clearly identifiable, dated and classified according to the amount of admiration they deserved.

Millions of Americans are entering their 60s and are more concerned than ever about retirement. They know they need to save, but how much And what exactly are they saving for to spend more time ___36___ the grandkids, go traveling, or start another career It turns out that husbands and wives max have ___37___ different ideas about the subject. The deepest divide is in the way spouses envisage their lifestyle in their later years. Fidelity Investments Inc. found 41 percent of the 500 couples it surveyed ___38___ on whether both or at least one spouse will work in retirement. Wives are generally right regarding their husbands’ retirement age, but men ___39___ the age their wives will be when they stop working. And husbands are slightly more ___40___ about their standard of living than wives are. Busy juggling(穷于应对)careers and families, most couples don’t take time to sit down , ___ 41___ together, and think about what they would like to do 5, 10 or 20 years from now. They ___42___ they are on the same page, but the ___43___ is they have avoided even talking about it. If you are self-employed or in a job that doesn’t have a standard retirement age, you may be more apt to delay thinking about these issues. It is often a ___44___ retirement date that provides the catalyst(催化剂)to start planning. Getting laid off or accepting an early-retirement ___45___ can force your hand. But don’t wait until you get a severance(遣散费)check to begin planning. A) assume B) confidential C) disagree D) formula E) forthcoming H) observe I) optimistic J) package F) illustrating G) mysteriously K) radically L) reality M) separately N ) spoiling O) underestimate 37()

A. assume
B. confidential
C. disagree
D. formula
E. forthcoming
F. observe
G. optimistic
H. package
I. illustrating
J. mysteriously
K. radically
L. reality
M. separately
N. spoiling
O. underestimate

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise to put all your eggs in one basket. You can give examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

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