March madness is here and it is not disappointing.  Yesterdays champion week games were phenomenal: a lot of underdogs--the lower ranked teams--won.  The games got physical, many were grueling, long battles that went into overtime.  For every team that felt the thrill of victory, there were players suffering the agony of defeat.  Some of my family, friends and acquaintances think this endeavor--cycling cross country in the heat of summer--indicates that I'm going  a bit mad.  Perhaps.  However, we've been collectively marching towards madness with the past 50 years of policy and passivity that has led us to a point where we accept 3, 000, 000 homeless people and 20% of our children suffering from hunger in a nation with more than enough food eat and empty rooms to house all our citizens.  What makes this situation crazier, is that decades ago both republican and democratic administrations figured out that it costs us more not to solve the problem than it does to solve it.  In other words, it costs more in tax-payer dollars to let people die in the street than it does to house them.  A lot more (see the following post for the numbers).  The point is, solving this problem is a win for all: property values increase, community health improves, crime and mental health issues decrease, there is less stress on our health care and justice systems.  So, when communities eradicate extreme poverty there are no losers.  Moreover, it's a relatively easy problem to solve; indeed, in numerous communities and countries we've solved it.  We've been feeling the agony of defeat, I have reason to hope that when it comes to eradicating poverty, we can get a win.  For more on this I recommend the book Gimme Shelter: Homelessness and the Efforts to End It by Deno Seder and Anita Semjen, as well as works by Matthew Desmond.