Homeless, Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees
Homeless Americans are frequently similar to refugees in that they often have personal issues cutting them off from the fabric of society which may include an abusive relationship with someone in a position to effectively block them from establishing a functional life.
For other displaced persons and refugees, the assumption is whatever disaster or civil disruption displaced them is the primary issue, which may or may not be true. But if you are dealing with some kind of large refugee camp or similar, a goal should be to get people out of there and back into a functional role as a normal part of society.
In the US, it is ILLEGAL to simply stick homeless people on a bus and send them elsewhere and make it someone else's problem. However, you CAN provide free transportation IF they have family willing to take them in, a job offer or some similar solution waiting for them elsewhere.
In a fictional series I read, interplanetary refugees who read and wrote English could get out of the camp. Alanis Morissette said in an interview she got to come to the US because she was "an alien with a special talent" which she found amusing.
If you want to shrink a refugee camp, start by setting up a program to arrange transport for individuals who have someplace to go, like family, friends or a job offer.
Then identify knowledge, skills or similar that can help you get people out of there for some reason. If you are seeing in the news that x skill is in short supply, see if you can identify refugees who have that skill and connect them with employers.
If you are in a situation like Gaza had at the time this was originally written, try to let foreigners or people with dual citizenship out if at all possible.
If you are in a very distressed country -- Haiti, Syria, Malawi -- and trying to wrangle something like this, you may need to help foster more development in rural areas, such as very basic water infrastructure, so there are rural places that can absorb some of these people without it creating new problems.
People who would like to help get really burned out on hearing your sob story and how your country is distressed and nothing ever gets better. It feels like they are setting money on fire for no reason.
But they are happy to be part of the solution. If you have a longstanding refugee camp and everyone long ago got tired of hearing about it, come up with a PLAN to begin shrinking it and getting those people out of there and THEN go do a press release or whatever and see if you can get help with implementing the plan.
IF possible:
1. Improve rural areas.
2. Then find a reasonable means to relocate people from refugee camps, especially in or near big cities, to your newly improved rural areas.
The odds are good SOME of the people in refugee camps or similar are getting by with cash transfers from friends and relatives via digital means (like cashapp) AND their money will go further and their life will be better in a more rural setting ASSUMING the rural setting has recently been improved and has the resources to absorb them.
So if you CANNOT come up with enough friends and family to take them, put together a PLAN to get international aid to improve small communities in exchange for taking SOME of these refugees. Maybe even have a few refugees WORK on these projects as their job as a legitimate reason to transport them there and then see if it "sticks" and they can make their life work.
Proviso: Homeless Americans face challenges in keeping track of ID and important documents of that sort. Relocate people with papers as quickly as you reasonably can and then help the people left to GET THEIR PAPERS as step one in getting their lives back.
Footnote
Originally published elsewhere on December 08, 2023. Edited slightly.
Solving the Bidoon Problem may be of interest if you are dealing with stateless people.
