Former president Jimmy Carter returned to Washington last week to talk about a house. Not the one he lived in for four years on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, but a house he will build this summer as part of the Habitat for Humanity Jimmy Carter Work Project.

Two years ago, Marvin Olasky, a University of Texas journalism professor, went undercover to experience the services available to the homeless and the attitudes that characterize Washington’s social workers. As he moved from shelter to soup kitchen, no one asked for his real name, no one asked about his family, no one asked how he became homeless.