Homelessness

I have been living out of a suitcase for almost two months. I have been excited and planned this myself. I thought it was a brilliant and wonderful plan that would save rent and be a great opportunity to live by faith and connect with friends. Well... we have yet to sleep outside, which is a combination credit to God and friends and family. However, the constant upheaval and discombobulation, lack of organization and space and nearly constant frustration over finding things, needing things, moving things and things not being available... is a far cry from the idealized summer of rest and fun I imagined earlier.

This leads me to my first interesting fact, which perhaps I should have known previously but did not. I recently read in Malcolm Gladwell's book, What the Dog Saw, that most people are only homeless for a day or maybe two. That homelessness follows power dynamics not a bell curve and that for most people it is very temporary and that the standard helps are not effective for the small percentage of chronically homeless people who are also by far the largest societal cost. In fact, and this is where is get interesting, it would be cheaper to just give this group of people a free apartment and significant life support, possibly even free alcohol, than be continually cleaning up their own self destruction. But Gladwell points out that this solution, which if implemented would effectively end homelessness, is not popular and difficult to find support for because it goes against our sense of fairness. People spectacularly self destructive: we give apartments to and stable, working people who are living below the poverty line: do not get free apartments! The economic efficiency and bottom line makes it an easy decision. But our sense of "fairness" triggers a complaint. A fair but imperfect and expensive system is preferable to an effective and less expensive system that seems unfair. "I am happy to be miserable as long as everyone else is a miserable as they ought to be."

This then lead to a conversation about a little know Abbotsford piece of trivia: Who gets a discount on coffee? Pastors! I say little known because I worked as a pastoral intern and was not informed and also have been out for coffee with pastors and seen no one get this discount. However, this came up in conversation because a coffee shop owner was complaining that Abbotsford pastors had a sense of entitlement to a coffee discount and he felt forced or manipulated in to giving one in order to not lose business. Around the table the sentiment was that it was outrageously unfair for pastors to get a discount (this is a group of Christians). I suggested that since pastors are almost professional coffee drinkers this was simple economics: provide incentives to good customers, influential customers or primary customer demographics in order to drive business up. Lots of companies do this in various ways. Whatever the exact motivation there are even better perks for being a cop or fire person. Celebrities, also often have meals complimentary and are given free stuff all the time. So I am uncertain why the indignation of the pastoral coffee discount. But it does highlight again this human interest in fairness... Which is not really about fairness since it is basically only applied when something occurs that does not benefit us but rarely when we are the special person to get the discount or present or perk. Furthermore, as Christians believe so passionately in grace, I am always surprised by this concern about fairness and similarly a tendency toward retributive rather than restorative justice (part perhaps because of our common atonement theology).

Finally, true fairness would be the end of North America. How is it fair some of us our born princes and others peasants both locally and then that much more so globally? As I have been told so often as a child, life is not always fair. No where is this more obvious than economics. And fairness at the end of the day, and our obsession with it, is not necessarily even good since it potentially stops us from effectively helping others or celebrating with others. I know because I often complain about what I perceive to be lucky success or discovery of employment: currently a particularly sore spot.

Also see: Matthew 20:1-16. If fairness is what we want than the kingdom of heaven is not a good place.