The Cleveland Hostel opens its doors to help homeless

A two-hour investigation places America’s heroin crisis in a fresh and provocative light -- telling the stories of individual addicts, but also illuminating the epidemic's years-in-the-making social context, deeply examining shifts in U.S. drug policy, and exploring what happens when addiction is treated like a public health issue, not a crime.

Sacramento City Council members and top city officials will travel Friday to explore Seattle’s network of authorized tent cities for the homeless as they consider creating a similar “safe ground” here.

Homeless and impoverished kids still have the chance to receive a college education, they just need to have the confidence that they can do so and a little pushing from outside forces. The author shares her own story of accomplishing just that.

Homelessness is still a rampant problem in the United States. The 100,000 Homes Campaign, an initiative launched four years ago, aims to help communities around the country place 100,000 chronically homeless people into permanent supportive housing

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.

Philadelphia reduced chronic homelessness by coordinating outreach through a centralized office and providing immediate access to housing and services such as counseling and drug rehabilitation. San Francisco is studying the model.

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.

In San Francisco, 23 percent of homeless people return to the street after transitional housing programs. A New York program gives the mentally ill and homeless individual apartments alongside average New Yorkers and has had an 84 percent retention rate.

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.

An Albuquerque program pays panhandlers to clean up city trash—and gets them needed help, pairing city services with a jobs program.