Many people believe a job is a cure-all for people down on their luck.

Need money for rent? Get a job. No gas for the car? Get a job. Kids at school are making fun of your kids because they’re wearing shabby clothes? Get a job. Can’t find an affordable place to rent? Get a job, you bum.

But it’s not that easy. What if you can’t qualify for subsidized housing because you’re deeply in debt? You maxed out the credit cards paying for food, clothing and car repairs before you lost the house. Or what if you’re a single, abused mother who can’t leave her small children to accept a graveyard shift at Wal-Mart or Home Depot? Or you had your car repossessed with all your identification in it and have no transportation to work. Crawling out of a financial hole isn’t as easy as it looks.

It’s difficult to help people out of the pit, too.

In North Idaho, the Bonner County Homeless Task Force is searching for matching money of $46,777 – or 20 percent – to hang onto a federal grant of $233,887 to keep two transitional housing programs open. Raising that kind of money is relatively easy for charities with thriving thrift stores in Spokane, Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls. It’s harder in less populated areas, such as Bonner County, which prefers to polish an artsy, resort image, rather than think about homelessness.

At this point, the task force has few options other than to join other local charities with their hands out or to give some of the federal money back for the fiscal year that begins June 1. Any refunded money will come straight out of program services for the battered women, dependent children and others struggling to get back on their feet – child care, transportation, counseling, life skills instruction among them. It would be a shame if the task force had to turn back that money.

Unlike most charitable organizations, the homeless task force battles a stigma. Possible contributors link homelessness with drug abuse or laziness. Contributors have told task force executive Deborah Baptist that their money is not to be used for homeless people, not realizing that 35 percent of them are women and children fleeing domestic violence. In the face of that bias, it’s challenging to explain that individuals staying at the transitional housing are tested randomly for drugs, that there are resident managers, that there are curfews, that there are success stories.

After finding shelter in the transitional housing program, one abused woman landed a job with flexible hours that enabled her to be with her children as much as possible. Later, she qualified for a Habitat for Humanity home. Today, she’s a productive homeowner who models the difference the task force makes in lives.

Homelessness has many causes, including lives steeped in self-destruction. But not all homeless people are to blame for their predicament. Helping contributors and prospects in Bonner County understand that fact is a good first step.