Increasing the effectiveness of programs that fight poverty

[laphoque]

I was reading about Street Medicine Detroit [[an apparent partnership between the NSO & WSU Med School), and I know about the Detroit Literacy Coalition, and places like Gleaners & Ruth Ellis. I appreciate what these programs do, but there is so much more to be done.

Can non-governmental organizations actually be an effective means to reducing poverty to the point where society becomes nearly crimefree?

How much money would it take to transform Detroit into a place more like Windsor: with a period of no murders for more than two years? What reforms could be implimented here to decrease poverty and could this happen while still encouraging the entrepreneurship and competition that drives prosperity [[out of ...opps schadenFreud.) in the free market?