Instead of Eviction, Landlords and Tenants Talk It Out

The city's health department wants to send ex-offenders who are trained to be "violence interrupters" to hospitals to talk with victims. Chicago has found such a program prevents repeat injuries.

In order to disrupt cycles of violence, Milwaukee’s Homicide Review Commission has recommended that Milwaukee police examine how their peers in Rochester, N.Y., organize police work around the concept of preventing disputes from escalating into violence.

Up until 2015, people living with HIV in the U.S. could not buy term life insurance, outside of a few small-value employer policies. Æqualis, a new company in partnership with Prudential Financial, began offering 10- and 15-year life insurance policies to individual consumers to help them and to reduce stigmas surrounding the disease.

Most insurance companies avoid insuring poor farmers because the transaction costs are too high, but a non-profit in Kenya created a sustainable way to cover them.

In the U.S. most supportive housing programs have a 75 percent turnover rate, meaning people end up in the streets again. Direct Access to Housing in California manages a turnover rate of only 15 percent by providing a home, counseling, and financial management.

Many poor students do not attend selective colleges not because they don't want to, but because they did not understand that they could. Basic information can substantially increase the number of low-income students who apply to, attend and graduate from top colleges.

Neighborhood Trust is a New York-based nonprofit offering financial advice to individuals experiencing economic hardships. Providing hands-on coaching, counselors are able to inform their clients about financial options they may have otherwise not known about like college financial aid or child care tax credits.

Around the world, students borrow money to pay for college, but, in the United States, students are more likely to fall behind on loans. Australia may offer some lessons: borrowers in Australia only start paying back their loans once their earnings reach $40,000, and beyond that they pay four percent of their income until the loans are repaid. The system does not penalize borrowers when they face economic hardship.

With more and more Americans having to pay medical costs out of pocket, a small company out of Philadelphia called ELAP is on the front lines of the war against escalating charges. By helping overwhelmed patients to de-mystify and negotiate medical bills, they are ensuring patients get the best value and avoid egregious financial distress.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, necessity has bred an interesting kind of financial invention for the New York MTA: the world’s first “catastrophe” bond - a reinsurance for the insurer - designed to protect public transportation infrastructure, specifically against storm surge. These bonds privatize risk for public gain, creating a kind of tool that may protect economic development against all kinds of natural and man-made disasters around the world.