The building trades are another example of an industry that modern nation-states impose on their societies, thereby modernizing the poverty of their citizens. The legal protection and financial support granted the industry reduces and cancels opportunities for the otherwise much more efficient self-builder. Quite recently Mexico launched a major program with the aim of providing all workers with proper housing. As a first step, new standards were set for the construction of dwelling units. These standards were intended to protect the little man who purchases a house from exploitation by the industry producing it. Paradoxically, these same standards deprived many more people of the traditional opportunity to house themselves. The code specifies minimum requirements that a man who builds his own house in his spare time cannot meet. Besides that, the real rent for industrially built quarters is more than the total income of 80 percent of the people. "Better housing," then, can be occupied only by those who are well-off or by those on whom the law bestows direct rent subsidies.
Once dwellings that fall below industrial standards are defined as improper, public funds are denied to the overwhelming majority of people who cannot buy housing but could "house" themselves. The tax funds meant to improve the living quarters of the poor are monopolized for the building of new towns next to the provincial and regional capitals where government employees, unionized workers, and people with good connections can live. These are all people who are employed in the modern sector of the economy, that is, people who hold jobs. They can be easily distinguished from other Mexicans because they have learned to speak about their trabajo as a noun, while the unemployed or the occasionally employed or those who live near the subsistence level do not use the noun form when they go to work.
These people, who have work, not only get subsidies for the building of their homes; the entire public-service sector is rearranged and developed to serve them. In Mexico City it has been estimated that 10 percent of the people use 50 percent of the household water, and on tire high plain water is very scarce indeed. The building code has standards far below those of rich countries, but by prescribing certain ways in which houses must be built, it creates a rising scarcity of housing. The pretense of a society to provide ever better housing is the same kind of abberation we have met in the pretense of doctors to provide better health and of engineers to provide higher speeds. The setting of abstract impossible goals turns the means by which these are t9 be achieved into ends.
What happened in Mexico happened all over Latin America during the decade of the Alliance for Progress, including Cuba under Castro. It also happened in Massachusetts. In 1945, 32 percent of all one-family housing units in Massachusetts were still self-built: either built by their owners from foundation to roof or constructed under the full responsibility of the owner. By 1970 the proportion had gone down to 11 percent. Meanwhile, housing had been discovered as a major problem. The technological capability to produce tools and materials that favor self-building had increased in the intervening decades, but social arrangements--like unions, codes, mortgage rules, and markets-had turned against this choice.
Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality
Monday, June 27, 2011
Building Codes and Homelessness
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Hauerwas' Commentary on Matthew 25:31-46
"In a wonderful essay entitled "The Scandal of the Works of Mercy," Dorothy Day lists the works of mercy, codified by Thomas Aquinas, based on Matt. 25:
The spiritual works of mercy are to admonish the sinner, to instruct the ignorant, to council the doubtful, to comfort the sorrowful, to bear wrongs patiently, to forgive all injuries, and to pray for the living and the dead. The corporeal works of mercy are to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to ransom the captive, to harbor the harborless, to visit the sick, and to bury the dead.
Her colleague, Peter Maurin, whom Day identifies as the founder of The Catholic Worker, was, according to Day, as much an apostle to the world as he was to the poor. He did not believe that works of mercy were a strategy to care for the poor until another and more effective social policy could be found. He believed that works of mercy were the social policy that Jesus had given people for the renewal of the world. According to Day, Maurin thought that in order to convince people [of this]
it was necessary to embrace voluntary poverty, to strip yourself, which would give you the means to practice the works of mercy. To reach the man in the street you must go to the street. To reach the workers, you begin to study the philosophy of labor, and to take up manual labor, useful labor, instead of white collar work. To be the least, to be the worker, to be poor, to take the lowest place and thus be the spark which would set afire the love of men towards each other and to God (and we can only show our love for God by our love for our fellows). These were Peter's ideas, and they are indispensable for the performing of the works of mercy.
Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, 211-12
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
A "Psalm" of Lament
A recent assignment in my Psalms class was to write a prayer in the style of a Psalm. This is what I came up with.
A Psalm of Luke, lamenting the derision of the poor.
Lord, you are the God of mercy;
Enact justice for your poor.
How long, O Lord?
How long will your people despise your poor?
A wicked man spits on the traveler
And your people ignore the beggar
They despise the desperate drunk
And fear the frenzied madman.
Your poor trod the thoroughfares,
looking for sanctuary to lay their head,
seeking a place to rest their feet,
but they find no respite and are turned out to the streets.
They pitch their tents among your trees
but the wicked slash or burn them.
They sit in the public places
but are told to move along.
The streets cry out in weariness;
The sidewalks scream in anger.
Is there no place for your poor O Lord?
Must they wander forever?
Soften the hearts of the people O Lord
Open them to your call for kindness
Throw open the doors of their homes
Put their stoves to work making soup
Make their living rooms a place of refuge
Drive them to know and share your hospitality.
Lord, you are the God of mercy;
Enact justice for your poor.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Bonhoeffer on Suffering and the Church
Suffering must be borne in order for it to pass. Either the world must bear it and be crushed by it, or it falls on Christ and is overcome in him. That is how Christ suffers as vicarious representative for the world. Only his suffering brings salvation. But the church-community itself know now that the world's suffering seeks a bearer. So in following Christ, this suffering falls upon it, and it bears the suffering while being borne by Christ. The community of Jesus Christ vicariously represents the world before God by following Christ under the cross.
-from Discipleship
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Saint Chrysostom on Saint Paul
Paul, more than anyone else, has shown us what man really is, and in what our nobility consists, and of what virtue this particular animal is capable. Each day he aimed ever higher; each day he rose up with greater ardor and faced with new eagerness the dangers that threatened him. He summed up his attitude in the words: "I forget what is behind me and push on to what lies ahead." When he saw death imminent, he bade others share his joy: "Rejoice and be glad with me!" And when danger, injustice and abuse threatened, he said: "I am content with weakness, mistreatment and persecution." These he called the weapons of righteousness, thus telling us that he derived immense profit from them.
Thus, amid the traps set for him by his enemies, with exultant heart he turned their every attack into a victory for himself; constantly beaten, abused and cursed, he boasted of it as though he were celebrating a triumphal procession and taking trophies home, and offered thanks to God for it all: "Thanks be to God who is always victorious in us!" This is why he was far more eager for the shameful abuse that his zeal in preaching brought upon him than we are for the most pleasing honors, more eager for death than we are for life, for poverty than we are for wealth; he yearned for toil far more than others yearn for rest after toil. The one thing he feared, indeed dreaded, was to offend God; nothing else could sway him. Therefore, the only thing he really wanted was always to please God.
-from In Praise of Saint Paul
