Two of the heroes in New York City’s ongoing struggle against poverty are Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem’s Children Zone and George McDonald of the Doe Fund. The opening of Hamilton Nolan’s excellent Gawker post about the latter organization, a homelessness-ending program started by McDonald, who is running a quixotic candidacy to be New York’s next mayor:

“The next mayor of New York City will not be George McDonald, though George McDonald is running for mayor. That’s OK. George McDonald is already better than any mayor has ever been at addressing the most obstinate social problems in this city’s modern history.

Homelessness. Poverty. Unemployment. These problems are usually seen as intractable, overwhelming, and hopelessly complex. They certainly can be, for those suffering their effects. But solving these problems is not a mystery at all. There is a nonprofit group in New York City called The Doe Fund that has developed perhaps the single most effective formula in existence for moving people from the streets to productive society.

Here is what they do: They take in homeless people, referred to them by places like Bellevue Hospital. Many of these people are fresh out of prison, with little safety net. They house them. They ensure they’re sober and make them abide by a schedule. They give them a job for starters—cleaning up trash around the city, for a month. The men in all-blue jumpsuits you see pushing brooms and emptying trash cans throughout New York are Doe Funders.

After that, the fund gives them classes in life skills and specific job training (they can choose between pest control, catering, building maintenance, and other specialties) for the next six months or so. There are mock job interviews, to get the pitch right. Then they send each one out to pound the pavement and find a job. When they find a job, they find them a place to live. By the time a year is up, the Doe Fund has transformed a homeless person into an employed person with a place to live.”