Rico Sharp spent thirty years running a men's transitional house to get homeless people off the streets. He says helping the homeless delivers three things: cleaner public spaces, lower crime, and saved lives. Sharp himself went from homeless youth to pastor and motivational speaker.
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30 years ago, I made a decision to dedicate my time and resources to help the homeless. I started a men's transitional house and began to get men off the street and bring them into my transitional house to help them to be able to get their lives back on track. Listen, people who are homeless on the street, that's someone's mother, someone's father, someone's brother, someone's sister, dad, uncle. That's someone's grandparent. And it's unfortunate that they are there, and you don't know their story as to how they ended up on that street. But what matters the most is that we as civilians in our society and citizens of our community have a heart to want to help them to get their lives back together. There are 3 things that I can assure you that will happen as a result of you having a heart for the homeless. Number one, we're going to clean up our communities. I know you're aggravated at times when you feel harassed by a homeless person at a store or traffic light, but when you help to get them off the street, and to be able to get their lives back together, you're reducing that exposure to people who are out there on the street and doing things that you feel like is inappropriate for the time being. Number 2, when you help the homeless to get off the street, then you're also reducing the crime rate because they're not left in a destitute situation where they felt pressured by all means necessary to do whatever they have to do to survive, which also includes Violating people's rights and premises or committing crimes. And then thirdly, number one, you're saving lives. You're getting people out of death's way, out of harm's way, so that they don't become a victim to circumstance even any more than what they already have. I bet you would have never known that even though I'm a pastor, motivational speaker, father, husband, grandfather, mentor, counselor, life coach, that one day I was that homeless young man needing someone to have a heart of compassion to help me change my life. And now I'm paying it forward. I have a proven strategy of how we can make our world a safer and a better place by helping the homeless. Come on this journey with me and let me break it down for you. Let's save lives. Let's save the homeless. I'm Rico Sharp. Life is what you make it.
