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Posted: June 8th, 2007 at 12:26am By: Kevin Considine
There is a cost to just about everything.
Not just in dollars but also in human terms. Because when you look at the cost of social change from a perspective of faith, then the human overshadows the dollar.
This is true with what we describe as "progress." It, too, comes with a price. In an urban setting like Chicago, progress often means development, redevelopment, economic opportunity and power.
This is what I've been thinking about this past week. That's because every day I drive by the rubble that used to be one of Chicago's notorious public housing projects. The complex formerly known as Stateway Gardens is in the midst of becoming the new, yuppie, mixed-income community Park Boulevard.
This is all part of the Chicago Housing Authority's "Plan for Transformation." This is the plan that has mandated the destruction of the Chicago high-rise public housing projects such as Cabrini Green, Stateway Gardens and the Robert Taylor Homes. After the rubble has been cleared, new, modern "mixed income" developments will arise on the same ground. The idea is to make public housing units less isolated from the rest of the city by mixing them with units sold at market value and at affordable, middle-class rates.
So condos and town homes will replace the tons of concrete from public housing compounds. The predominantly poor and black residents of Stateway Gardens will be replaced by a mix of well-educated white and multi-ethnic professionals and students. Some would call this gentrification. Some would call it progress. Maybe it's a bit of both: progress with a price.
This is progress because the poor, predominantly black residents of public housing should never have been directed to live in 20-story, crime-ridden, rat-infested dwellings. They never should have been abandoned by the rest of the city to live in a subculture of violence and grit. In these terms, the redevelopment may indeed offer a new start and safer environs to many.
Yet it comes with a price. Its price is that communities will be disintegrated (and yes, they are communities), many of the poor will not be relocated into the new developments and there will be no justice for the impoverished people of Stateway Gardens, who have been the victims of institutional abandonment by the city of Chicago and who have been victims of alleged police brutality. (For more information, see Jamie Kalven's report "Kicking the Pigeon.")
In essence, we Chicagoans narrowly define economic development as progress. And it's no question that economic development and opportunity are necessary for neighborhoods, communities and cities to survive and grow. It's just that we need to ask ourselves if the price is too high. Because poor people, who have been made expendable and powerless, are the price of this progress. For the city to grow and be attractive for development, poor people must be removed, transferred, given a face-lift or hidden. In short, their humanity often is the price of development.
In reality, even in the United States in the year 2007 poor people are expendable. It is much worse in other nations, but it exists here as well. This is why the Catholic Church professes a preferential option for the poor. This is the doctrine that God is uniquely concerned with the least and the lost and is present and working among the poor and the marginalized in a privileged way. God does indeed love all women and men, but, as shown in the Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Gospels, God as revealed through Jesus Christ offers a privileged relationship to the least and the lost.
As the University of Notre Dame's Center for Social Concerns describes it: "As followers of Christ, we are challenged to make a preferential option for the poor, namely, to create conditions for marginalized voices to be heard, to defend the defenseless, and to assess lifestyles, policies and social institutions in terms of their impact on the poor. The option for the poor does not mean pitting one group against another, but rather, it calls us to strengthen the whole community by assisting those who are most vulnerable."
In Chicago we must remember the preferential option for the poor. In concrete terms this means that God is uniquely present and working among the impoverished in Chicago Public Housing. And these aren't just nameless abstracts but living, breathing, flawed, messy human beings. They are made in the image of God just like the rest of us. It's just that we've decided that they are expendable in the face of progress.
Maybe that's controversial, but I think it's the truth. And that's why I wonder if the human price of progress is too steep. I'm short on alternative ideas at the moment, and I welcome ideas or suggestions, but my own lack of a current solution doesn't negate my responsibility of voicing when the least among us are being dehumanized.
And I realize that it's a delicate balance between economic development and taking care of the poor. After all, I'm not naïve enough to think that we can help the poor without economic realism. Still, I hope there can be a better way.
For we have a mandate from God as revealed through Jesus Christ to take care of the least and the lost. Time and time again, we choose to do otherwise, and the redevelopment of Chicago public housing is but one example of this.
This is an example of progress with a price. And for Christians this human cost is too great.
— — —
Kevin Considine is a graduate student at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Recently he was married to a most wonderful woman who keeps him in line and reads his columns to see if they make sense. He and his wife live on the South Side of Chicago. He welcomes comments, feedback or fits of anger and can be reached at {email considkp@yahoo.com}considkp@yahoo.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kevin Considine.
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There is a cost to just about everything.
Not just in dollars but also in human terms. Because when you look at the cost of social change from a perspective of faith, then the human overshadows the dollar.
This is true with what we describe as "progress." It, too, comes with a price. In an urban setting like Chicago, progress often means development, redevelopment, economic opportunity and power.
This is what I've been thinking about this past week. That's because every day I drive by the rubble that used to be one of Chicago's notorious public housing projects. The complex formerly known as Stateway Gardens is in the midst of becoming the new, yuppie, mixed-income community Park Boulevard.
This is all part of the Chicago Housing Authority's "Plan for Transformation." This is the plan that has mandated the destruction of the Chicago high-rise public housing projects such as Cabrini Green, Stateway Gardens and the Robert Taylor Homes. After the rubble has been cleared, new, modern "mixed income" developments will arise on the same ground. The idea is to make public housing units less isolated from the rest of the city by mixing them with units sold at market value and at affordable, middle-class rates.
So condos and town homes will replace the tons of concrete from public housing compounds. The predominantly poor and black residents of Stateway Gardens will be replaced by a mix of well-educated white and multi-ethnic professionals and students. Some would call this gentrification. Some would call it progress. Maybe it's a bit of both: progress with a price.
This is progress because the poor, predominantly black residents of public housing should never have been directed to live in 20-story, crime-ridden, rat-infested dwellings. They never should have been abandoned by the rest of the city to live in a subculture of violence and grit. In these terms, the redevelopment may indeed offer a new start and safer environs to many.
Yet it comes with a price. Its price is that communities will be disintegrated (and yes, they are communities), many of the poor will not be relocated into the new developments and there will be no justice for the impoverished people of Stateway Gardens, who have been the victims of institutional abandonment by the city of Chicago and who have been victims of alleged police brutality. (For more information, see Jamie Kalven's report "Kicking the Pigeon.")
In essence, we Chicagoans narrowly define economic development as progress. And it's no question that economic development and opportunity are necessary for neighborhoods, communities and cities to survive and grow. It's just that we need to ask ourselves if the price is too high. Because poor people, who have been made expendable and powerless, are the price of this progress. For the city to grow and be attractive for development, poor people must be removed, transferred, given a face-lift or hidden. In short, their humanity often is the price of development.
In reality, even in the United States in the year 2007 poor people are expendable. It is much worse in other nations, but it exists here as well. This is why the Catholic Church professes a preferential option for the poor. This is the doctrine that God is uniquely concerned with the least and the lost and is present and working among the poor and the marginalized in a privileged way. God does indeed love all women and men, but, as shown in the Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Gospels, God as revealed through Jesus Christ offers a privileged relationship to the least and the lost.
As the University of Notre Dame's Center for Social Concerns describes it: "As followers of Christ, we are challenged to make a preferential option for the poor, namely, to create conditions for marginalized voices to be heard, to defend the defenseless, and to assess lifestyles, policies and social institutions in terms of their impact on the poor. The option for the poor does not mean pitting one group against another, but rather, it calls us to strengthen the whole community by assisting those who are most vulnerable."
In Chicago we must remember the preferential option for the poor. In concrete terms this means that God is uniquely present and working among the impoverished in Chicago Public Housing. And these aren't just nameless abstracts but living, breathing, flawed, messy human beings. They are made in the image of God just like the rest of us. It's just that we've decided that they are expendable in the face of progress.
Maybe that's controversial, but I think it's the truth. And that's why I wonder if the human price of progress is too steep. I'm short on alternative ideas at the moment, and I welcome ideas or suggestions, but my own lack of a current solution doesn't negate my responsibility of voicing when the least among us are being dehumanized.
And I realize that it's a delicate balance between economic development and taking care of the poor. After all, I'm not naïve enough to think that we can help the poor without economic realism. Still, I hope there can be a better way.
For we have a mandate from God as revealed through Jesus Christ to take care of the least and the lost. Time and time again, we choose to do otherwise, and the redevelopment of Chicago public housing is but one example of this.
This is an example of progress with a price. And for Christians this human cost is too great.
— — —
Kevin Considine is a graduate student at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Recently he was married to a most wonderful woman who keeps him in line and reads his columns to see if they make sense. He and his wife live on the South Side of Chicago. He welcomes comments, feedback or fits of anger and can be reached at {email considkp@yahoo.com}considkp@yahoo.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kevin Considine.
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