The first chart shows the states where homeless live in the United States.
The second chart displays where the poorest live who do not even have correct indoor plumbing.
The third chart depicts a better understanding of the counties in each of the states where people live who are without one’s basic needs.
Help the Needy Where You Live
Extreme poverty throughout the world is much different from the extreme poverty in the United States. 
Most people in the United States have access to clean drinking water, bathrooms, and food. Even the poorest of the poor are not starving to death like the poor people in Africa. But that does not mean we do not need to help everyone who is struggling to live in the environment they are in.
Giving to our charity and to others is great and very much needed, but you can also help the needy right where you live. Donating to us is simple. But actually taking one’s time and giving it, happily accepting all the problems that come along with it, to help another where you live is a much greater act of love.
We Have Much Room for Improvement
For many of us, the devil wants to convince us that the charity, the good deeds, we are doing is enough. Or that we don’t have anything to give. But if we honestly look into our lives, we will see MANY ways we are living to love ourselves, not God (through loving others) and have MUCH room for improvement. We are far from being the perfect image of selfless, like Christ. Therefore, we have much to change. To make the correct improvement, we should be striving to be perfect like Christ… to remove all self-love and live to love God–through loving others, that is, doing what is best for others earthly lives (loving Christ in others), doing what will help them move towards salvation (a saving faith)–in ALL we do. Learn more.
Endless Ways We Can Help
There are very simple things you can do daily to help the homeless. Learn More.
However, if you wish to provide great assistance to anyone in need, homeless or not, I don’t suggest you provide that kind of help without working alongside a reputable local charity (even if they are not perfect) since you want to be as effective and safe as possible in doing your work.
Ways you can help:
For example: Let’s say, you have much money that you have been saving and spending to find for yourself greater and greater happiness with the comforts and pleasures of this world. But now, you want to love God and help His children instead. You can use your money to provide low-income housing to help those who work hard but do not earn enough money to afford a place to live or to those who just lost their job but are in pursuit of another who would otherwise be homeless, or to someone who just lost a spouse, or obtained an illness, or to any of the other very real and reasonable reasons why people lose everything and have to live on the streets.
To do this, you don’t need to be good with management or building but you do need to find someone who is. There are already plenty of legit organizations (make sure you check by personally seeing what they are doing) who can work with you to help those who simply can’t afford to pay the extremely high cost of housing and could greatly use your assistance.
Or if you have less money to give, you can reach out to your local church and inquire about individuals who may be struggling to afford basic necessities like food, utilities, or home repairs. Then, instead of indulging in expensive meals, or material possessions, or taking another vacation, or getting a different car, or renovating your own home, you can save up your money to help others who are truly in need.
You can help provide food, daycare, toys, auto repairs, and everyday expenses that many people simply do not have the money to afford. Really, there are endless ways you can help others. Look into your heart, God has the perfect plan that He has been waiting your entire life to use you to do good for His children in need.
But money is not the only way we can help others with their needs. If you have a skill/trade, you can teach it to someone who has none. Teaching someone to fish goes a lot further than just buying them fish. You can use those skills to better someone’s entire life. Your skills can also be used to help people who need your services for free or at a discount. If you have free time, you can help with childcare for someone who has to work. But even if you are sick, crippled and even dying, you can help others and love like Jesus, being completely self-less, to your end. Learn More
It is easy to get caught up in self-love and live for the endless plans we have made, but if we want to really love God (learn more), then we need to change what we are striving for and allow God to use our time, talent and treasure for His honor and glory, so He can save us and others from a life and eternity of suffering. Instead of spending our day thinking of all the great things we want to do and get to benefit ourselves, we can spend our day thinking of how we can better help others (according to God’s will)… not waiting for them to come to us, but us going to them, and truly loving like Jesus.
Use Caution:
When donating money to help those in need, it’s important to exercise caution. Since we all sin, plenty of people fall into the temptation of taking advantage of another’s generosity and/or take more than is truly needed or use one’s gifts for a drug or alcohol habit instead. So, consider purchasing the food or paying the needy’s utilities directly (not so they become dependent or feel entitled, but to help them over a hump), or by donating through a reputable organization that has measures in place to prevent charity abuse. Please do not refuse to help someone with a sinful habit, just realize their sins are perhaps different from yours, but many of them still need help. We simply need to be responsible for helping them, doing it in the best way possible so the help they really need is met.
Please Don’t Let Bad Keep You From Doing Good
Jesus did good after good and continues to do good after good for us and how do we treat Him… we crusify Him and offend Him without care with endless sins. But has that stopped God from helping us? No.
Sure, our sins, much of the time, do turn His face from us (Isaiah 59:2), but that is because we are rejecting Him with our sins, not because He doesn’t want to help us because we are sinners. So, please do not let the actions of a few, who might make wrong choices, discourage you from doing good to help them and others anyway… just like Jesus does every day for us.
Just take every experience as a learning opportunity, to grow understanding other’s weaknesses (sinfulness), and knowledge to learn how to best help them, as we strive to show the love of Christ despite anyone’s shortcomings. Of course, sometimes others’ sinfulness will cause us to turn our face from them until they leave their sins too. But the main goal to remember when caring for others is to do our very best to emulate Christ… seeking what is best for their earthly live that will lead to their eternal life. Of course, much prayer and grace is needed to actually know what that is. But when done correctly, then souls will truly be helped for Christ will be doing the work through us.
Love God
Please keep in mind that no matter what you are doing, no matter who you are helping, you are doing it to love God. He is who you are loving in all you are helping, for He lives in everyone… so seeking what is best for each person you are caring for, regardless of how they treat us, is what must drive us.
To correctly love God, we must do all we can to avoid offending Him with any sin. Sin offends God. It reject’s Him– His grace. It increases His suffering, He must bear at His crucifixion, since He boar the weight for all of our sins. Plus, it hurts His Sacred Heart to know that we prefer sin over goodness… which hurts us, hastening us towards death not life. The injure sin inflicts upon ourselves is what causes causes God to suffer. He does not want to see us reject good for evil and suffer which causes Him unfathomable pain. Therefore, if we want to love God, we must strive with all our free will, seeking God’s grace for help, to not sin.
Furthermore, helping others while sinning does not allow God’s grace to flow through us (sin rejects grace). Then much of what God wants to do through us will not be accomplished. Therefore, love others as Jesus loves us, showing patience, understanding and love, as you care for His children with their earthly needs but doing all for the one goal—their Eternal Life (helping them grow into salvation). For if we feed people food for their bodies but do not feed them food for their souls, none of what we have done will be of any real good. Eternity is forever.
Truly loving God is by doing all so His children can obtain a saving faith and be with Him in Heaven. This is why Jesus left Heaven, gave us His Word and does all. He wants us in Heaven. Let’s teach the poor how to amend their lives and call upon the name of the Lord to save them–to change their hearts into hearts of true love for God/true contrition for their sins–so they can embrace the saving, forgiving mercy Jesus died to give them. Learn More
Humility
Without Humility (Knowing Our Own Sinfulness) Our Good Works Will Kill Us
It is very important to maintain humility, knowing that you (without grace) are nothing but sin and no better than anyone you are helping. We are the same. If you do accomplish anything that is good, it is not you who are doing it but God. It is only God’s grace that can do anything good, if you allow Him.
Pride rejects grace and takes our works, even if God has given us the desire and skills to do them and makes them done with little to no grace from God, making them not truly good, displeasing God, and leading us to death, not Life. Even if we do great works and wonders, they will not be truly good. Therefore, in all that you do, humbly rely solely on God’s grace giving all glory to Him, which is much harder to do than we might understand (learn more). To avoid falling, strive to stay in constant humility (knowing your nothingness) with constant prayer, fasting, and sacrificing your will, being totally dependent on God, so His great grace can move you.
The Cross is the Way to Christ
Prayer, fasting and sacrificing (choosing the cross, not choosing what our flesh wants, which are things to love ourselves) is essential for the salvation of souls as God uses it to soften hearts so they (especially the ones you are helping) can be able to accept God’s grace and gain eyes that can see and ears that can hear. Therefore, prayer, fasting, and sacrificing are essential as you care for the corporal and spiritual needs of others towards the salvation of souls (helping others obtain a saving faith).
Do All for the Love of God and His Glory Alone
Be careful not to do any works of mercy because you find pleasure in it (for self-love). This is a great problem in works of charity. Because when we do good for others, we find joy in that work. Then we seek to do it because of the pleasure it brings. Now, we are serving others because it serves ourselves (makes us happy). When this happens, to help us see the false intentions of our hearts, God will be sure to send us a person who will treat us just horribly for all the good we have done for them, so we can see how we were actually doing good to be treated good in return, not to love God but to love ourselves. By sending us the cross (challenging people), God is giving us the opportunity to become enlightened to our self-love, so we can repent and change and live to love Him, who even lives in the rude/abusive person.
For any work to be truly good, we need to do it not to see the smile in the eyes of the ones we are helping or to know we have made such a difference in the lives of others (which will happen and is good), but rather we must do all to please God, who only finds pleasure in what we do when it is done for His glory, not our pride inflating happiness as we boast of our “goodness” (when nothing truly good is done by ourselves anyway). That is the only way grace can go through our works towards helping His children obtain Eternal Life.
Once we learn how to remove our self-love and truly do all for the love of God, no cross (abuse, criticism, ridicule, theft, etc.) that comes our way, in anything we do, will be a problem. For we will no longer be living to be loved (treated well, praised, etc.) but to love God, by offering up our suffering for the salvation of souls in union with God and His cross. For God wants His children in Heaven… putting all our efforts in helping them get there is how we truly love Him.
