The three articles I posted this week appear on the same page-and-a-half in the latest Economist magazine. I think they are each worth some consideration for Christians who want to wrestle with what the proper place of government is in society (local, state, and federal). I hope we might discuss how our Christian identity informs our political views on these issues, as well as, how our particular Christian communions are engaging these issues directly.
-NB
The Economist “Getting Strategic” (June 26-July 2, 2010)
IT USED to be the case that the homeless were, almost exclusively, single adults. Today homelessness is affecting a growing share of families with children too. The number of homeless families has increased by 30% during the past two years. During the 2008-09 school year, America’s public schools reported more than 956,000 homeless pupils, a 20% increase over the previous school year. In New York City alone, some 8,200 families with children are homeless.
Overall, the number without homes is staggering. The number of homeless veterans of the Vietnam war is greater than the number who died in it. On any given night in America more than 640,000 men, women and children are forced to seek shelter, live in their cars, or sleep on the streets. Last year nearly 1.6m people used an emergency shelter.
The Obama administration unveiled a multi-agency national strategy to combat this national disgrace on June 22nd. The plan has four goals. It aims to end chronic homelessness (defined as being continuously homeless for more than a year) in five years, and homelessness among veterans in five years, too. It also seeks to end homelessness for families and children within a decade. And it will lay down a strategy for tackling all other types of homelessness as well. The 67-page plan, called “Opening Doors”, is the first comprehensive federal effort to end the evil, which is normally a matter for the states. This is “a tragedy we can solve” says Shaun Donovan, secretary of housing and urban development and chair of the Inter-agency Council on Homelessness, which drew up the plan.
Much of the progress made in battling homelessness—chronic homelessness has fallen by a third in the past five years—has been at local level. The new plan hopes to take what is working best in cities and counties and apply it nationwide.
Expanding the supply of affordable housing would be a good first step. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there is a shortage of 3.1m low-cost rental units. Collaborative efforts at the state and local level, along with partnerships with private and non-profit groups, have reduced homelessness in places like Chicago by as much as 12%. Getting federal agencies to work together has helped to take veterans off the streets and obtain health benefits for them. A multi-agency effort that combines housing with social-services support is essential, according to Mr Donovan, and results in fewer hospitalisations, fewer costly ambulance and police call-outs and fewer days behind bars. It will save money for taxpayers, too.
Barack Obama seems determined to do something about homelessness. Last year’s stimulus package included $1.5 billion to prevent it. He also signed the HEARTH Act, which strives to rehouse rapidly those who lost their homes. The Reverend Glenn Chalmers, of the Holy Apostles soup kitchen in New York, is glad that the federal government has finally taken the lead on this issue. Perhaps because the queues for food begin early every morning outside his church and are as much part of the urban landscape as the skyscrapers, he remains a little sceptical.
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I'm hypersensitive right now to the question of federal government intervention in the problem of homelessness because I am exchanging emails with Phil R. about an article he sent me last week which talks about the relationship between the "new Left," socialism, and what the author refers to as "world purification" ideology. To make matters a bit worse (or a bit better) I am reading a book by F.A. Hayek called "The Road to Serfdom" in which the author addresses socialist ideologies of the Left and Right and writes that although a liberal welfare state and socialism are not the same, the former makes a society much more prone to the latter (I'm only 80 pages in).
ReplyDeleteAll this to say, statements like the one that follows (from the above article) would have been upsetting to me before but I see them with an even more heightened sense of suspicion now: "[Homelessness] is 'a tragedy we can solve' says Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and chair of the Inter-agency Council on Homelessness, which drew up the plan." I realize that public figures sometimes make statements they don't actually mean but feel they must say anyway, but I don't think this is one of those instances. When decision-makers in a government are driven by the achievement of unachievable goals, they are bound to make serious missteps. Homelessness is not a problem the federal government can solve (or any other entity for that matter).
Also from the article, "The 67-page plan, called “Opening Doors”, is the first comprehensive federal effort to end the evil." "Collaborative efforts at the state and local level, along with partnerships with private and non-profit groups, have reduced homelessness in places like Chicago by as much as 12%."
Local, state, public, and private partners have had some success in assisting large numbers of homeless people in places like Chicago. And there probably are some best practices that can be generalized and applied to other cities across the country. So the federal government might well have a legitimate and helpful role in assisting with this transfer of information across localities. The federal government might also have a quite modest and limited role in supplementing private social service partners who serve homeless people, but as a general rule it should never be in the business of direct delivery or administration of massive programs of this sort.
But, I am still left somewhat conflicted on a federal initiative to "end" homelessness for the following reasons:
ReplyDelete1) Especially for this Administration in this area of policy, there seems to be no sense of limits. The problem of homelessness will never end, and yet, the stated policy goal or at least the suggested policy premise is that it can be ended. The more socially comprehensive and transformative an effort aims to be (e.g. ending homelessness in the U.S.), the more we should view that effort as one that should be sourced and conducted by means which are devoid of coercive elements (i.e. taxation, forced redistribution).
2) However, there are so many illegitimate/immoral federal expenditures in terms of some industry subsidies and military purchases/activities that this relatively small investment in a worthwhile cause seems more difficult to oppose outright.
3) To complicate matters, I think there is a place for national programs that address short-term economic emergencies in the lives of families or individuals, of which a significant portion of homelessness is the result. My main concern is with long-term welfare programs, specifically, the dependency issue, among other things (I don’t know where this new federal policy on homelessness falls in this regard). This is no small matter. I recently heard economists on the Left and Right address the recent debate in Congress about extending unemployment benefits. Both sides mentioned the harmful incentives of continued extensions on expiring benefits. They have noticed a trend where growing numbers of people are holding off their search for work until just before the requisite deadline (when a person has to demonstrate that she is seeking employment). With each extension, increasing numbers of people fall into this pattern. At a time like this, I am not advocating total demolition of the federal unemployment benefits program, but I think it illustrates a problem with long-term assistance programs administered by nameless/faceless agencies in a far-off place.
4) Finally, I think the Church should give more, think more, support more, and coordinate more with respect to efforts aimed to alleviate homelessness. Whereas above I mentioned serious concerns about government officials being “driven by the achievement of unachievable goals,” in this context things are very different. At the heart of the Church’s efforts in the world IS “the achievement of unachievable goals.” For Christ, “unachievable goals” is not a valid category. After all, he created reality (and totality of its possibilities and limitations), still holds it together, and will ultimately restore it. For Christians, these sorts of “socially transformative” goals (ending this or that major human problem) are certainly ones we should engage, but this engagement should rarely be based on coercion (i.e. large-scale state intervention) lest we create worse problems than the ones we sought to address in the first place.
I’ll end with an excerpt from a document published by the Center for Public Justice (http://www.cpjustice.org/content/welfare), a think-tank near DC:
“Public welfare assistance must not substitute for, but rather supplement and be coordinated with, help rendered by family, relatives, neighbors, and co-workers. Through means such as temporary income maintenance payments, Earned Income Tax Credit, and food stamps, it is legitimate and at times necessary for government to provide financial assistance to persons and families unable to earn sufficient income on their own. However, government does not very effectively provide the kind of direct personal services that promote self-sufficiency, particularly when obstacles are deeply rooted.”
This think-tank takes its Christian identity seriously, and I often find their materials very compelling. In re-reading their paper on welfare, I’m not sure if what I said falls squarely with their position or not.