...until our Nation's leaders can figure out what the Hull is going on

David Brooks, of the failing New York Times, argues the merits of a Hull-House style approach to benefit both the poor and the wealthy, the old and the young, and the immigrant as well as the "old stock", all under the same roof of an institution designed to embody the principles of humanist philosophy and the mutual exchange of knowledge, art, and goodwill.
Jane Addams was a strong-minded and idealistic woman of the 19th century who was born into affluence and privilege with a mind for social justice and the material means to explore the world and acquire works of fine art and literature which she would later share with a very diverse population in the Chicago community where she established Hull House in 1889. The large mansion, which was located near the West side of Chicago, first opened its doors to newly arrived immigrants and later became the arts and community center for thousands of people to use as a cultural and educational epicenter for what later became the Nation-wide Settlement House movement.

The Settlement House Movement was indeed the roots of early Social Work in the United States.
What made Hull House unique and far ahead of its time was the idea of sharing not only basic living resources and cultural competencies, but also a great deal of emphasis was placed on the exchange of ideas, arts, humanities, classical education, and creative expression through writing.

 Another, more recognizably modern function of the Settlement House movement was the systematic and scientific models of social research that was facilitated by volunteers and members of the community in which these arts and community centers were located. This research informed the work of the social welfare reformers that became the first wave of activist social workers and macro practitioners who were concerned with matters of public policy for the good of the entire diverse communities.

I read Brook's article only a couple of weeks after one of my cohorts in the MSW program at USM and I attended a staff meeting at Florence House, which is a homeless shelter, collection of Safe Havens, and residential community for the chronically homeless women in the Southern Maine/Greater Portland area where she and I are both interns learning the fundamentals of case management and community relations.
It was at this meeting where one of the directors of the program and an employee of Preble Street Organization gave a little push-back at the suggestion that staff work in concert with the other members of the community to try to create more of a "home-like", or cohesive community dynamic in order to both address some of the issues of cleanliness and interpersonal conflicts that are characteristic of the place and continue to be a source of tension and frequent disruption among the population on a very regular basis.

Although the reasons that she gave us were not unfamiliar, I was surprised to hear that the position she had on the matter was that we weren't there to provide a "home" as much as a safe place for the women to plan their means to moving into more suitable living circumstances outside of the temporary "shelter". This reasoning sounded more like the conservative's position of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps than the model of the old Settlement House movement.
I was an undergraduate studying psychology at USM when I took my intro to Sociology class and I had been introduced to the Hull House and the history of the scientific method as it applied to the early development of Social Work. This is one of the first seeds that ultimately grew into my interest in the field. And it is my belief that Social Work, as a profession, needs to reconnect with these roots in order to address the issues facing our society today more than ever in my lifetime.
It is discouraging to find that providers of direct services like the one's found on offer at Preble Street and the growing organizational facilities would see the mission as a means to relay people from homelessness, drug addiction, and profound untreated mental illness to places more suitable to provide services closer to the medical model of deficit reduction instead of the strengths-based approach inherit in our professional foundations.
What we need is a new Renaissance type resurgence of the Settlement House movement starting with Florence House and moving its way through the rest of Preble Street's facilities.