Our sins become their own fitting punishment

I could be wrong, but I think God sees to it that our sins become their own fitting punishment. The selfishness of abortion causes us to have a skewed Social Security system that badly lacks the projected contribution of 55 million babies who would have been there to pay into this generation’s retirement fund. The fear and/or hatred of immigrants explains the much higher cost of crops no longer picked by “illegal” agricultural workers in Alabama no longer doing the slave labor of harvesting. And the gated-community mentality that deprives lower-income people of the basic human right to housing has made New Jersey the place with the moniker of the nation’s most economically segregated state.

High court cases starting in Mount Laurel a half century ago demanded affordable housing for all. It seems simple. Require home builders to provide a fair percentage of affordable homes so that people would not have to live under overpasses and in cars, and simple justice would be served. Make it so that such size-limited communities would not degenerate into government-subsidized slums by spacing them out across the state, and the main objection of well-off people would be removed. Studies show that poor children in smaller developments attending schools with higher-income students fare better. Homeowners show more evidence of caring for their properties. Neither they nor their worried neighbors want slums.

Since New Jersey is the second richest state, all of this can be done with no damage to homes and communities already in place. But if ungrounded fear is allowed to spread, the poor suffer unnecessarily. Opponents need to be shown there is room for all.

But Gov. Chris Christie has tried to cripple the Council on Affordable Housing, the court-ordered agency in charge of overseeing housing for all. He has seized up to $200 million set aside by builders in trust funds just for that purpose. The legislature, of the opposite party, should override his veto of allotting money to municipalities that need time to see how best they should use the money, which by law can have only one destination. It’s odd how that can be circumvented legally. When politicians filch money from their campaign funds, they are jailed. It does no good to say that the noble goal of balancing the state budget merits redirecting housing money to the general fund.

How can Trenton channel so much money to Sandy victims of high-rent shore communities that provide second and third homes for the wealthy while stiffing the disadvantaged? Is government only for the big donors? Clever dodges of wealthy towns skirting their charge to house people by paying inner-city areas to provide low-income housing were declared illegal. But towns too were responsible, delaying construction while trust fund money piled up with no visible result. Christie has even purposely dragged his feet in failing to approve compliant municipalities’ four-year spending plans submitted to Trenton. This and his rear-guard court battles to end the COAH.

The underlying prejudice here is the stance against the less advantaged. It cannot be justified economically or legally. It is rather like the argument that if we do not have enough guns available, criminals will be the only ones with guns since we can count on them not to obey the laws that the “good guys” do. In other words, if you claim something often enough, no matter how devoid of logic, people will start to accept it. If we keep repeating that our towns will become inner cities by allowing the poor entry, we will bar decent people from court-secured rights with no evidence to show for it.

I could be wrong about God wanting us to live respecting each other and not victimizing anyone economically. But I don’t think so. Jesus had to lecture his contemporaries about the unlikelihood of greed-driven people entering the Kingdom if they kept the Lazaruses at the gate eating scraps. Greed was no new problem, then or now. The 25th chapter of Matthew has Jesus using some of his harshest threats against those who saw their neighbor hungry or thirsty or unclothed – and bypassed them.

When we go to Mass, do we imagine a God who is pleased with our prayers and hymns and incense but who somehow ignores our depriving the poor of homes or food or clothing, all out of paranoia that there won’t be enough for us, the advantaged?