Meet Oakland California's First Self-Governed, City-Sanctioned Homeless Camp

By partnering with cities across America, the 100,000 Homes campaign is going directly to the streets to end homelessness - and it’s working. With roughly 700,000 people in the United States experiencing homelessness, this organization seeks to address that using a tiered system that considers individual health needs as well.

The highest hospital costs come from preventable emergency room visits. A doctor in Camden developed a home visit program which gives better and cheaper care.

American humanitarian aid and programs by the United Nations have proved beneficial to equip Middle Eastern refugees with resources for self-settlement outside of camps. The self-settlement model has empowered refugees to become more productive members of society when they return home.

New Orleans implemented an extraordinary 10-year plan that engaged unprecedented cross-sector collaboration between government, non-profit, and private entities to provide housing and housing services to the city's homeless veterans. The city's success in providing homes for every single veteran formerly on their streets motivated cities across the nation to tackle the crises using similar means, leading to a 1/3 decline veteran homelessness since 2010.

Assertive community treatment teams working through outreach-centered programs in Maricopa County have become an industry standard for treating those with persistent and severe mental illnesses who have recently been incarcerated. They provide a long-term approach, aiming to halt a cycle of incarceration and hospitalization by focusing on underlying issues such as what caused the police interaction and incarceration.

Hospitals in the U.S. throw out huge amounts of supplies and equipment, and third-world hospitals need it. Many organizations help bridge the gap to transport supplies, but end up donating unusable equipment - teaching hospitals what to donate as well as knowing where the equipment is going are just some of the ways that efficiency can be improved.

In Houston, TX, many individuals with mental illnesses cycled in and out of emergency care while arrested or incarcerated. Houston’s police department has decreased the number of incarcerated who have mental illness by opening a division to mental health called the Chronic Consumer Stabilization Unit. Now Milwaukee seeks to replicate Houston’s results.

Refugee camps typically look like a prison with squalid conditions and barbed wire tops. By contrast, the Kilis refugee camp in Turkey is orderly, secure, and clean; has schools for children; has grocery stores, and is powered with electricity. The camp is not run by the United Nations, but rather it is Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency that oversees every detail and pours billions of dollars into maintaining it every year.

The Homeless World Cup is the premier soccer tournament for homeless players. Programs around the world use soccer as a means of building a sense of community, sublimating negative energies, and encouraging personal growth.

San Francisco's Care Not Cash program began in 2004 in response to the city's homelessness crisis. One facet of the program is an outreach team, whose members regularly visit homeless people on the street to connect them to resources such as housing and drug rehabilitation.