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In Columbia, S.C., the police got tired of trouble at houses abandoned to foreclosure: teenagers drinking, vagrants camping out. They wearied of trying to persuade the legal owners — banks in Seattle and New York — to clean up the mess. So they went in themselves with plywood and nail guns, boarding up the strongest magnets for activity.

In San Mateo, Calif., near San Francisco, an aid organization called Samaritan House recognized that people were turning up at homeless shelters simply because they could no longer pay rent. The agency began handing out rent contributions. Later, the federal government began its own program, generating fresh funds.

On a March afternoon, Sameh Girgis arrived at Samaritan House to apply. A gentle man of 50 with a warm glow to his cheeks, he earned a master’s degree in mathematics in Egypt. He was sheepish about asking for a handout, but the alternatives included the street. A taxi driver now with too few fares, he was behind on his $950-a-month rent.

Girgis considered a homeless shelter. But he was raising a 16-year-old daughter alone, his wife having died of cancer.

“If it’s by myself, I don’t care,” Girgis said. “The problem is, I have a teenager. She wants to have a shower. She needs to clean herself. I love my daughter. She’s all my life.”

The details of his life were not easily contained within the boxes on the forms the federal government required.

“What’s your race?” a caseworker asked Girgis, who considers himself Egyptian.

“What’s that mean?” he said. “I’m black? I’m white? I don’t know.”

“Are you a veteran?”

“In my country,” he said. “I was an officer.”

Current housing?

“A one-bedroom apartment,” Girgis said. The neighborhood was infested by gangs. His daughter slept in the bedroom, he on a fold-out in the living room.

“Does the apartment have a pool?” the caseworker asked, and Girgis’s face now brightened with amusement. Did it have a rec room? A fireplace?

“No,” he said, elongating the word, absorbing the cheap pleasure of irony.

Finding scapegoats