Easing the Way Home for Returning Senior Citizens

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.

A few adult children have found that the simplest arrangement can be found in an apartment at the same retirement community, as it enables them to care for their elderly parents efficiently.

More retirement and nursing homes are asking college students to move in, an arrangement that benefits everyone. Students stay free of charge in exchange for volunteering to help the seniors.

These days, most rural communities in the U.S. are elderly communities - 15 percent of Wyoming’s population is over 65 and a high percentage of them live on ranches in small towns. New caregiver programs allow seniors to continue living at home and to keep doing what they are able, with assistance provided if needed.

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.

The U.S. prison population is aging, which is costly because older inmates need more care. Some states have responded by creating special wards, having the young inmates care for the old, or building nursing homes.

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.

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.