Resilient communities are essential for refugees, and involving residents is the key

Making the transition from the street to permanent housing can be difficult - it's hard to force people to seek help. San Francisco works to help the homeless rise from the poverty cycle by pinpointing the most chronically homeless people on the street and urge them into services.

Refugee camps save lives in emergencies – but often refugees languish there for decades. Two columns on programs that allow refugees to live normally in cities, with an ATM card taking the place of a camp.

Through the Burbank Senior Artists Colony - a community created by EngAGE - low-income seniors learn how to become artists. The recreational classes hosted by the community keep people feeling phsyically and mentally young, allowing them to focus on recreation instead of financial hardship.

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.

Milwaukee County’s mental health system put more resources in expensive emergency care rather than invest in programs that offer continual care. As a result, Milwaukee County identifies nine solutions from other cities that have had success in repairing mental health systems. Solutions include the ending of reliance on emergency care, expand community support programs, change laws, and supportive housing.

Should housing be considered a form of healthcare? New York State thinks so, and is funding "supportive housing" through the state's Medicaid program.

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.

Many of the errors in our homelessness policies have stemmed from the conception that the homeless are a homogeneous group. It’s only in the past 15 years that organizations like Common Ground, and others, have taken a more granular, street-level view of the problem — disaggregating the “episodically homeless” from the “chronically homeless” in order to understand their needs at an individual level.

Environmental refugees in Ethiopia flee their country because there are no jobs without healthy land. A group of former refugees have returned to Ethiopia with a business venture in Gergera to improve the land by regreening efforts, foresting, and building water conservation systems. The new businesses demonstrated such positive effects that the region is now on the brink of resettlement due to improved environmental conditions.

Female sex workers in the United States face greater incidents of rape, drug abuse, health risks, and suicide, contributing to a high mortality rate. Incarcerating the number of prostitutes is also costly. Dallas Police Department has initiated the PDI New Life program, which catches prostitutes and brings them to a 45-day temporary shelter to receive social services, health care, counseling, and alternative employment.