Our Unhoused Neighbors: Bringing them Home

French sociologist and jurist Jacques Ellul, who died in 1994, was a prolific writer best known for his writing on technique, propaganda, money, and ethics.

He was a Marxist Christian who embraced the contradictions between the two, believing that dialectic tensions should not lead to “synthesis” but should remain what they are: tensions. For Ellul “tensions” could and should form our approach to life because they acknowledge the complexity of the world and our approaches to dealing with it.*

For example, in his writing on technique, Ellul frequently dealt with the tension that technique was both a normal part of human advancement and a power that had enslaved humanity in a pernicious search for “the one best way” or the most efficient means to achieve something.  

For Ellul, the problem is that humanity’s quest for the one best way has left us enamored with means but bereft of a clear sense of where we are headed (the ends). He spoke of our deployment of prodigious means that enable us to hurtle full speed towards nowhere.

An Uncomfortable Dialectic

I have returned to Ellul over and over in these times and pondered his thoughts and what it means for the problem of houselessness in our community.  Dealing with the challenge exposes many tensions—many contradictions.

• Tension: We promote “housing first” as the key—get folks into housing first and then deal with the myriad issues after that—but some will not use the “second” services offered, remaining trapped in substance use disorders and untreated mental illnesses that inhibit them from accepting treatment.

• Tension: Unhoused people arguably do not represent a violent threat to the community at large, but violence within unhoused communities is a big problem.

• Tension: Many unhoused individuals engage in illegal behavior to obtain drugs, but the nature of a substance use disorder limits their ability to make appropriate choices.

These real tensions send a message to disgruntled community members that no one has a clue about what is going on, that there is no real way forward, or that the problem is too big for a City our size to deal with.

At the limit, some view the challenges of and plans for dealing with houselessness as contradictory, inconsistent, and even dishonest. They sense that proponents of solutions are excusing bad behavior, minimizing impacts on the community, and allowing lawlessness to prevail.

But, like Ellul, I have moved towards the conviction that these tensions cannot be resolved.  There is no synthesis to be found.  We must live with the contradictions and seek a way through them to change our current reality.

I understand these contradictions/tensions to be a function of the many facets of the problem. The word “homeless” is a single term that cannot capture the diversity of situations, the wide variety of people trapped within it, and the many different situations that led people to this place.

We ignore the tensions by defining a syndrome by a simple and simplistic observable phenomenon: people living without permanent shelter, a fixed address, or a known place to lay their heads.

But tensions DO abound because this “thing” actually consists of many things simultaneously. One can say almost anything about houselessness, and it is probably true in at least one case. But drawing on Ellul, we must choose to remain within the tensions to better and more honestly understand the multiple causes, the difficult outcomes, and the uncertain impacts of our efforts to address the challenge.

To acknowledge the actual “thing” we are talking about, I will limit the remainder of this piece to examining what we are really seeking to address: chronic houselessness—people living rough for extended periods with limited options to move out of it.

The “Ends” of Our Efforts Related to Unhoused People

Recently, our City Council debated creating a new ordinance defining unauthorized camping on public or private land as “illegal” and imposing penalties, including charging it as a misdemeanor, engaging in a civil action against “campers,” and obtaining restraining orders against offenders.

This ordinance passed its initial reading and is on its way to becoming law. It criminalizes houselessness and responds to the calls of some in the community to make our community as inhospitable as possible for “the homeless.”

(The denials by certain Council members that this is NOT the criminalization of houselessness required rhetorical hair-splitting that was painful to watch.)

Indeed, when the ordinance was rolled out, the Chief of Police acknowledged that it was needed because neighboring communities were doing it, and we needed to protect ourselves from the inevitable influx of people being moved out of those communities.

In other words, other towns were sending criminals our way, forcing us to create laws to send them “elsewhere.”

Listening to the debate, I was struck by how profoundly it dehumanized the people in this situation. There was little nuance. While there was a suggestion that there were “good” unhoused people who accepted our largesse and “bad” unhoused people who did not, this simplistic dichotomy did nothing to elevate those directly concerned by the ordinance to the status of human beings with histories, agency, gifts, loves, and pathways to a better life.

The only name of an actual unhoused person uttered during the entire meeting was the public shaming of a young man with a long history of untreated mental illness by a local “respected” business leader.

The unhoused were absent, both physically and psychically.

While Council members, who spoke with gravity about the challenges, repeatedly evoked the “complexity” of the situation, the solution offered was a crude hammer that saw every complexity as a nail.

There was no discussion of causal factors (except by one Council member):

1) Untreated mental illness—not just in the present, but over the past two generations;

2) Untreated substance use disorder (drug use was viewed simply as a criminal activity done by immoral people);

3) Undiagnosed and untreated trauma; and

4) The firm commitment of this community and many others to build as little housing as possible (again, over the past generation, at least).

I am writing this piece today, in part, to express my grief over the discussion.  

The ordinance is a call to “social cleansing,” a call to “move them along,” “get rid of them,” or “make them leave.”

As I listened to the debate, I was forced to re-examine the “ends” and the efforts I support to address the problem.

And while it may be far too vague for programmatic purposes, I have settled on the following as the “ends” statement of what I am trying to accomplish.

I believe that the end of our efforts should be to “provide a homecoming” for those who are on the streets.  

Providing a homecoming implies a “welcome back,” a “reintegration,” a “return.” More than anything (and I want to be careful not to dehumanize the many people who find themselves in this condition), I see chronic houselessness as a form of alienation: alienation from society, from healthy relationships, and ultimately (I fear) from oneself.

I will not say, as many suggest, that this alienation is a choice, or perhaps more accurately, the inevitable outcome of a series of choices.  The evidence is clear that “choice” has very little to do with it and maybe never did.  But even if there was a choice in there at some point, today, in the moment, we see folks who are adrift, dis-integrated, on the margins.  

Though they are in our midst they are the “other” in a way that causes fear. Though we see them, we do not—indeed, cannot—look at them.  Though we know they are without a house, we do not want to imagine where they lay their heads.

And what I am saying is that our goal should be to bring them home. Now I realize that this can sound paternalistic or condescending. Please forgive me if it does, but what I am trying to convey is that we need to reel them in, to send out a message, to find a way to communicate that we want them not just among us, but with us; not just present, but included; not just housed, but home.

What this homecoming will look like varies by the case, but it will certainly mean a return to mental and physical health, a roof, a job if that is possible, meaningful and healthy relationships (even if not with kin), and a sense of peace about where one will go the next day to take care of life’s basic needs.

The Means by Which We Will Achieve These Ends

I realize this end is not fully articulated. Still, if we can grasp the concept of the need for homecoming, then we will have taken an essential step on the long path towards constructively dealing with homelessness.

But what of our means?  Well, the foregoing should point the way to the kinds of programs, approaches, and processes that will probably be necessary: mental health and addiction treatment, housing, job training, and supportive services.

But I want to focus on what I believe to be the means that will make all these other means work.

I believe that the means by which we must approach this challenge is best defined as “pursuit.”  

We must doggedly pursue the people whom we wish to welcome home. Again, I write the foregoing with a bit of trepidation.  What I mean by “pursuit” is that we must not give up in our attempt to welcome people home.  We must not grow weary because of the failures, the flameouts, the inevitable disappointments.  We must be determined to continue.

However, pursuit has another meaning: we must commit to the relational. We must never see houselessness as a “technical” problem to be solved, a condition that lends itself to “dose/response” input or is left to a cadre of professionals who deliver programs. No, we must pursue loving and longstanding relationships as simple folks with the simple commitment to “press on.”

I realize that not everyone is gifted to be a “pursuer.”  I know that others must stand alongside or stand aside as the pursuit continues.  That’s okay. But for those who are gifted (and I suspect you know who you are), for those who were made for or who have grown to do this work, we must be relentless in our pursuit of the relationships that result in the homecoming of these, our brothers and sisters without houses.

*See Garrison, Kevin “Jacques Ellul’s Dialectical Theology: Embracing Contradictions about the Kingdom in the New Testament.” in The Ellul Forum.  Issue 60, Fall 2017.