Sometimes the key to ending homelessness is, quite literally, a key.

At Community Service Alliance (CSA) on Cleveland’s Near West Side, every man who enters one of our four residences receives a key to the house and his own room. It’s a simple gesture, but it means everything. It says: You belong here. You are trusted. You have a place of your own.

That small act of trust is where transformation begins.

I first came to understand the complexity of homelessness 50 years ago. In my early 20s, I spent more than a year volunteering with the Catholic Worker in New York, living above its soup kitchen and serving hundreds of men each day who lined up outside our door. What struck me then and has stayed with me since is that homelessness isn’t simply about lacking shelter. It is, at its core, a

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