Just look at line 19 on form TC-40, the Utah Individual Income Tax Return. There you will find a little box marked "Code" and "Description." It's Utah's way of encouraging taxpayers to designate contributions to worthy causes. Code 02 corresponds to the Pamela Atkinson Homeless Trust Fund.

A donation to the Homeless Trust Fund can help make it possible for a chronically homeless person to live in his or her own apartment for the first time. Think of that. There are people among us who have not had a home they could call their own in decades.

Pamela Atkinson, Utah's Mother Teresa to the homeless, points out that if every Utah tax filer contributed just $2 through line 19, that could raise $1 million. That money would be matched by federal grants and other private donations. She knows exactly how to put those funds to good use.

In 2005, social service providers in Salt Lake County decided to experiment with a new strategy to help the chronically homeless. They would lease apartments for 17 men and women, most of whom had lived on the streets for years and struggled with mental illness and addictions. The clients could keep their apartments indefinitely on the condition that they meet regularly with a caseworker and not violate the law or damage property.

This was a departure from past practice, which provided temporary transitional housing only if people could stay sober and find a job. The new program, called Pathways, reversed that bargain. The housing came first, the treatment came as a condition to keep the housing.

It worked. Not just that, it worked extraordinarily well.

Of the 17 original participants, 16 are still housed (one died; two went into long-term care facilities). Nine obtained Social Security benefits; 10 obtained Medicaid or other government health coverage. A quarter of them got jobs, some full-time.

You may be thinking, well, that's fine, but the cost to taxpayers must be enormous. But in fact, preliminary study shows that it is cheaper to the public purse to provide apartments and ongoing outpatient care than to house people in emergency shelters and provide health care in hospital emergency rooms and detox centers when the need becomes acute.

We should know more when the University of Utah releases a thorough analysis.

In the meantime, Pathways is showing promise. And you can help.