Journal of Vincentian Social Action Volume 4 Issue 1 Symposium on Street Homelessness and Article 14 Catholic Social Teaching May 2019 No Place to Be! Common Goods and Homelessness Patrick Riordan [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.stjohns.edu/jovsa Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, Business Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, Disability and Equity in Education Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Law Commons, Life Sciences Commons, Medicine and Health Sciences Commons, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Riordan, Patrick (2019) "No Place to Be! Common Goods and Homelessness," Journal of Vincentian Social Action: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 14. Available at: https://scholar.stjohns.edu/jovsa/vol4/iss1/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by St. John's Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Vincentian Social Action by an authorized editor of St. John's Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NO PLACE TO BE! COMMON GOODS AND HOMELESSNESS Patrick Riordan, SJ, Ph.D. his paper brings together the abstract concept of suitable accommodation, welfare provision Tof common goods and the concrete issue of policy can result in closure of units for the care homelessness. The phenomena of homelessness of the mentally challenged who are ‘returned will be shown to challenge the naïve assumption to the community’, cuts in subventions such as that our political existence is grounded in a sense housing benefit can exclude young families from of goods we hold in common. And at the same the private housing market. Causes are many, and time, a clearer understanding each homeless person’s story is of what is involved in having unique. But whatever might be goods in common will highlight the immediate causes in any one a further dimension of the “…the people she person’s history, the situation of scandal of homelessness in our presents live their lives the homeless, lacking a place to societies. I focus first on the go, is common to all. notion of common goods and four feet below the rest of the demands they make on us. us, sitting or sleeping on Tamsen Courtenay (2018) has published a collection of Second, I explore the reality the sidewalk.” of homelessness to show the interviews with homeless people challenge it poses to the liberal in London. She gives it the title society’s confidence in its own Four feet under, because the basic premises. But before people she presents live their treating the conceptual material lives four feet below the rest it is worth clarifying in advance what is meant by of us, sitting or sleeping on the sidewalk. These homelessness. interviews reveal the wide range of histories that can lead to the point of living on the street. For all Homelessness names the phenomena of people their diversity, the one thing they have in common having no homes to go to, nowhere to sleep, and ‘is that not one of them has a home’. A home is so they sleep in the street, in doorways or subway an address and having an address ‘means you passages. Also labelled rough-sleeping, it is the belong. Not having one creates a whole world of unmistakable reality encountered on the streets pain and sorrow’ (2). Her interviews reveal the of most big cities. Identifying the phenomena details of that pain and sorrow: without privacy, does not commit us to explanatory accounts of without shelter, having to cope with illness such as the causes of homelessness. These can be many, food poisoning, or fever; without security, fearing at different levels, ranging from personal tragedy theft of everything from begged money to shoes to at the individual level, to housing policy at personal mementoes. municipal or national government level. A crisis in housing provision can lead to an increase in COMMON GOODS rough-sleeping, as can budgetary cuts in welfare Homeless people seem to lack so many goods and provision. Policy impacts on homelessness in to be without a share in the common goods of various ways. Economic policy can lead to society. To provide the analysis for the argument unemployment, housing policy can mean a lack that homeless people are excluded from common JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 No Place To Be! 86 Common Goods and Homelessness goods in which they ought to have a share it is common good: as all action is for some good, necessary to recall what is meant by good, and by and all cooperation is for a good in common, common good. Aristotle’s Ethics (1981) focuses so the highest form of cooperation is for the on the goods, intermediate and ultimate, that highest common good. This assertion will be people pursue. He asks what good would be later challenged by Christian thinkers like worth pursuing as the ultimate purpose in life. Augustine, who are not willing to concede that His remarks are very general, ‘the good is what the greatest good of humans is achieved through all things desire’, and ‘whoever acts, acts for some politics. While acknowledging the strength of good’ (Riordan, 2008, 16-27). As action is for this revision, we don’t have to reject Aristotle’s some good, so, Aristotle thinks, joint action is insights completely. Even in our twenty-first for some good in common. This insight lays the century world we recognize that the sovereignty groundwork for his political philosophy, as in of the state entails that it is the ultimate arbiter of the early pages of The Politics (1972) he lists the which organized pursuits of which goods can be examples of cooperation in a scale of complexity, tolerated by the political community. The truth from the basic partnership of male and female, of this is not undermined by the articulation of through the more complex collaboration required human and civil rights, setting limits to what in a household, then a village and a region with the state may legitimately do to its citizens and its various villages, until he identifies the most others. Those limits are typically accepted by the complex cooperative form of all, that of the political authority in a liberal state. In a Bill of polis or city. Again, we find Aristotle is abstract, Rights, for instance, the state commits itself not to or programmatic, in his account of the political interfere with the freedoms of conscience, speech community’s collaboration for goods in common. and association, or with the right to property of The polis is the form of community in which its people. But always there is the proviso that cooperation is able to provide all that is desired such rights are exercised peacefully, and that their for the good life. The good life is contrasted with exercise is conducive to public order. Determining life itself, said to be the business of the household, these exceptions is done by the public authorities. focused on providing what is needed for survival Even if the modern liberal state declares itself and for continuing existence both as individuals neutral about ultimate goods and does not attempt and as community. Daily and generational to guide people towards a specific vision of their reproduction is achieved in the household, but fulfilment, it nevertheless maintains the framework the city provides answers to the questions about within which the pursuit of all goods is publicly life’s purpose. Citizens, Aristotle believes, are regulated. In this limited sense, Aristotle’s assertion united in their comprehension of what is good of the highest good retains a validity. and worthwhile, and what is lawful and just. At the heart of the city, the political community, is Another point in Aristotle’s analysis still valid agreement on such matters. And it is the capacity in our modern context is his assertion that the for reasoned speech which marks the human as basis for political community is a shared view a political animal, in comparison with the social of what is good and beneficial. While this may animals, who have voice to communicate. Only appear to be negated by a contemporary denial the human enters into a deliberation about what that it is the business of the state to decide on the is worthwhile. Hence for Aristotle the importance good for people, and an espousal on the part of of the public deliberation in the forum and in the the liberal state of neutrality towards the good, assembly when convened as a court of law. Shared there is nonetheless a fundamental commitment meaning is central to the political common good in the liberal state to some dimensions of good. (Riordan, 2015, 83-96). Those dimensions belong not among the ultimate goods, but among the means and conditions for Aristotle makes another claim about the political fulfilment. The facilitation of human freedom JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 No Place To Be! 87 Common Goods and Homelessness is a central good of the liberal state. But more But even though we can be confident about the significantly, the commitment to resolving conflict fact that cooperation is for a common good, it about goods by negotiation and conciliation is does not follow that we can be confident in all a foundational good for the democratic state. cases in saying what exactly that good is, and what On this at least the citizens of a modern state it comprises. Whenever we speak about common might be expected to agree, that conflicts should goods, whether as the ultimate end of human be conducted in a political manner.