Religion and Homelessness in the United States: Three Approaches Manuel Mejido Costoya a Version of This Article Is Currently Under Review for Publication
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Religion and Homelessness in the United States: Three Approaches Manuel Mejido Costoya A version of this article is currently under review for publication. Do not distribute or reference without permission. The role of FBOs in responding to homelessness; the contributions religious worldviews make to reimagining the common good; and how the adherents of a faith tradition understand and address the suffering of unhoused individuals in light of their convictions and hopes—these are the three approaches to the relationship between religion and homelessness that will be outlined in this article. Taken together as a heuristic, these three approaches frame social-scientific, ethical and theological perspectives that correlate with the three types of questions, that according to Immanuel Kant, critical thinking should accommodate: What can I know? What ought I do? What may I hope? What can I know? What ought I do? What may I hope? -Immanuel Kant1 The “wandering poor,” “sturdy beggars” and “masterless men” of the colonial epoch; the “vagrants” and “great army of tramps” of the Gilded Age; the “train-riding vagabonds” and “hobohemians” of the Progressive Era; the “transients” and “migrants” of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression; the skid row “bums” and freight-riding beats and hippies of the postwar period; the “deinstitutionalized” unhoused of the 1960s and 70s; and the more racially diverse and younger “street people” of our late-modern epoch. 2 In its different instantiations, homelessness has been with us since the beginning, as a symptom of social crisis and as an opportunity for community responses, evoking both our inner demons and “the better angels of our nature.” In this article, I would like to tease out three approaches to the relationship between religion and homelessness. One approach grapples with the role of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in civic life and community development. A second approach considers how religious worldviews and precepts inform those conceptions of justice and the common good that ground our duties toward individuals experiencing homelessness and the institutional arrangements that ensure that all members of society flourish. And a third approach focuses on how the adherents of a faith tradition understand and address the suffering of unhoused individuals in light of their convictions and hopes. Before I tease out these three approaches, allow me to situate the issue of homelessness as a symptom of the disparities that define our late-modern age. A Land of Stark Contrasts According to the latest estimates from the federal government, on any one night, well over half a million people were homeless in the United States.3 This represents an increase of about one percent since 2016. Driving this national increase is the rise of homelessness in major urban centers. Furthermore, Minority populations are disproportionately impacted by homelessness. While African Americans make up 13.3% of the country’s population, they represent 40.6% of people experiencing homelessness. Hispanics and Native Americans, too, are disproportionately impacted by this social problem. Indeed, homelessness is a manifestation of inequalities of place and of the compounding effects of poverty, social exclusion, and the attenuation of social protection systems. The 2018 United Nations report on extreme poverty and human rights in the United States succinctly captures the disparities that need to frame any attempt to grapple with the issue of homelessness in America: The United States is a land of stark contrasts. It is one of the world’s wealthiest societies, a global leader in many areas, and a land of unsurpassed technological 2 and other forms of innovation. Its corporations are global trendsetters, its civil society is vibrant and sophisticated and its higher education system leads the world. But its immense wealth and expertise stand in shocking contrast with the conditions in which vast numbers of its citizens live. About 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty. It has the highest youth poverty rate in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the highest infant mortality rates among comparable OECD States. Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent, and it has the world’s highest incarceration rate, one of the lowest levels of voter registrations in among OECD countries and the highest obesity levels in the developed world…[It] has one of the highest poverty and inequality levels among the OECD countries, and the Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranks it 18th out of 21 wealthy countries in terms of labour markets, poverty rates, safety nets, wealth inequality and economic mobility.4 Why these “stark contrasts”? A principle reason no doubt is that in America long-term societal objectives tend to be framed narrowly in terms of economic growth. While economic prosperity is important, a society also needs to be oriented by values such as social inclusion, care for the planet and good governance.5 Consider, for example, that while the U.S. ranks 4th among the 33 richest countries in terms of GDP per capita, it ranks 21st in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a broader framework for thinking about societal objectives, unanimously adopted by the 193 member states of the United Nations in 2015.6 3 Consider also that while GDP per capita has more than doubled since 1972, life satisfaction, or happiness, has not risen. In fact, in recent years measured happiness has actually been on the decline, reaching a ten-year low in 2016.7 Behind this paradoxical trend are factors that include the decline in social trust; the rise of mega-dollars in U.S. politics; soaring income and wealth inequality; the decrease in social mobility; and the deterioration of America’s educational system. As the economist Jeffrey Sachs has observed, “the United States offers a vivid portrait of a country that is looking for happiness ‘in all the wrong places.’ The country is mired in a roiling social crisis that is getting worse. Yet the dominant political discourse is all about raising the rate of economic growth.”8 Homelessness in the United States needs to be understood against this backdrop. It is a symptom of an American Dream that is increasingly being cast principally or exclusively in terms of economic growth, with the assumption that the desired social outcomes will follow. Though it is increasingly being recognized as an important issue throughout rural America,9 homelessness is largely an urban problem, exemplifying the economic and social challenges facing U.S. cities in the post-industrial age. The 50 largest American cities experienced a five percent increase in unhoused individuals and a 21% increase in unsheltered homelessness between 2016 and 2017. The prevalence of homelessness across these cities, moreover, is not proportional to population size, suggesting that what is driving homelessness is not simply the scale of urbanization. Though ranked among the five most populous cities, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix, for example, do not have the largest homeless population. By contrast, Seattle is the 18th most populous city, and has the third largest number of homeless individuals. Among the ten major cities with the largest homeless population, five are in the West Coast, a 4 region that is experiencing a housing crisis, and two—San Jose and Seattle—are also considered pacesetting high-tech urban hubs.10 An important story told about American cities is that of the “Great Divergence”:11 With the emergence of the information economy, some cities have become prosperous innovation hubs, favoring knowledge-intensive industries that attract highly educated workers. While other cities, in the throes of deindustrialization, continue to be linked to a manufacturing sector that generates mainly low-income jobs and fails to attract the skills needed for innovation. This growing inequality between cities is an important dynamic no doubt, especially in light of the populist politics that has come to the fore recently. Yet, concerning specifically the issue of homelessness, there is another dynamic that is perhaps more germane—namely, the growing inequalities within cities. The inequalities that plague most American cities, and especially those booming technology hubs, have been well documented.12 The structural determinants of these persistent—and even increasing—inequalities can be found in the new forms of urban marginality that crystallized in the most advanced societies in and through the information technology revolution, the restructuring of capitalism and the end of the Cold War.13 Three mutually reinforcing dynamics generate these “regimes of advanced urban marginality”: First, class fragmentation and labor flexibilization brought about by market deregulation, deindustrialization and weakening of unions; 14 second, the racialization and penalization of poverty brought about by the implosion of the protective communal ghetto and the rise of mass incarceration; 15 and third, the dismantling of protective welfare brought about by the rise of mandatory workfare and the punitive management of poverty.16 These transformations of class, race and state, which constitute the neoliberal city, provide the backdrop against which to situate 5 common risk factors for homelessness, like unaffordable housing,