Who am I to look down on them?

I have always been fascinated with people that are homeless - having grown up in a large city seeing a homeless person was part of my everyday life. As a kid I used to pick out places on the streets or in parks that I would live if I were homeless, and dream up all kinds of things I would do to get by. I was used to homeless people - I thought I knew a fair amount about them. In my International Development class yesterday we had a speaker come in who is on a task force to end homelessness in Utah over a ten year period. I learned so much from listening to him. I learned that the cardboard box, sleeping bag on the street homeless are really only 10% of the homeless people nation wide, and they are the chronically homeless. The 90% that we don't see are homeless for shorter periods of time, and mostly stay in the shelters and out of sight. The ten-year initiative focuses on placing homeless people in housing, whether they can afford it or not, and getting them jobs. They have had enormous success, and the best part about it is that putting the homeless people in housing is actually cheaper than letting them stay on the streets. It makes more economical sense, because for them to use the shelters and emergency rooms, they can rack up bills as much as $400,000 in a year, but on average about $100,000. After all the costs are considered, it is much cheaper to have them in housing where they will not need shelters or emergency rooms as often. But the thing that he said that stuck out the most to me was his point that homelessness can happen to anyone. In my class of about 25 students he said that the high probability was that one of us would be homeless, at least for a while, within the next twenty or thirty years. And all we would want was someone to reach out to us, talk to us, support us, and love us. To understand us. Not to look down upon us, or judge us, or ignore us as they walk by. The people that are homeless now want those same things. Lloyd Pendleton, the speaker and director of the Homeless task force, ended his lecture with a thought. It is his opinion, that in the pre-mortal life we all got to choose what families we would come to. Some of us chose the nice, rich families in nice locations. Others chose the middle-income families in the same locations. Others chose the poor families with strong moral values and a loving environment. It was the bravest of the brave that chose the dysfunctional families with drug and alcohol problems and very low income. These chose to endure that kind of a life, and we chose to be in a position where we could help them out of it. Are we keeping that promise to our pre-mortal friends? And if we are not, even if we are, what right do we have to look down upon or judge those who are so much braver than ourselves?