Community?

___So, after being passed a link to This Tumbleweed Life and reading through a few of the posts I came across this post which talks about the homeless, more specifically, the growing number of homeless children. The solution that the post suggests is to support your local faith-based homeless shelter. Now, admittedly, the post's author is an ELCA Lutheran pastor (which explains the faith-based bit) however, it got me thinking on the subject of community, or lack thereof.
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___In our complex social system, communities seem to serve a few basic needs: validation, identification, and support. These concepts are ordered in an egocentric manner, an individual feels the need for validation (See Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs), the idea that there are others that think like they do; once part of that group, the individual can be identified (also read stereotyped), and identify themselves; then, finally, be able to support, and be supported by, their community.
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___These needs originated from the idea that a group can survive more easily than an individual and thus, so long as the individual feels safe inside that group, the individual will desire to remain inside of that group. At the present, of course, survival in such a life or death sense is no longer an issue... or is it?
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___While we may say, homeless "community", what we really mean is a group of individuals that all share the commonality that they have no home. Many suggest that we give this "community" a helping hand... but maybe what we should really be giving them, is a way to bring these individuals into an actual community...
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___Just a thought.