The following is an October 11 letter from Bishop Patrick McGrath and Catholic Charities on Measure A:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We need your help in order to address the urgent crisis of homelessness and the lack of affordable housing in our beloved Valley of St. Clare.
This November each of us, who are registered voters, will have the opportunity to vote our consciences informed by Catholic social teaching on a number of ballot items. Many of these are worthy of deeper dialogue. However, one in particular affects both the most vulnerable homeless and each of us who are residents of Santa Clara County. That is Measure A, the proposal to build affordable housing to help end homelessness and to help children and families live in safe, decent affordable housing.
Inspired by Christ’s call to serve the least of our brothers and sisters, the Catholic Church actively helps homeless families and individuals, seniors, and other vulnerable individuals and families in need through a broad network of charitable responses. We are grateful for the dedicated service of parish outreach volunteers and members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for providing emergency rental assistance to needy families. We are pleased to witness parishes and other congregations sheltering homeless women, men, and families through the interfaith winter shelter network initiated by Holy Spirit Parish and coordinated by Catholic Charities Parish Partnerships. Through the competent professional work of Catholic Charities social workers and Charities Housing Development, as a church we have been able to build affordable apartment buildings and assist thousands of people in moving out of poverty and homelessness into permanent supportive housing. These works of faith need to continue and grow.
Yet all our good work is being overwhelmed by the current housing crisis. Too many veterans have vouchers for affordable housing but no place willing to accept them. Too many children and families are living in cars or tripled up with other families in small homes because they can’t afford the rent on their own. Too many of our own teachers and workers commute long distances to serve our community of faith because they cannot afford ever increasing rents and housing prices.
We need to do more, and we can’t do it alone. That is why we are voting “Yes” on Measure A, to finance the building of permanent affordable housing to help end homelessness and enable children and families, seniors and people with disabilities and others of limited means to live in safe, decent, affordable housing. As Pope Francis said in his message to Congress during his visit last year, “Let me be clear.
There is no moral or social justification, no justification whatsoever, for the lack of housing.”
We invite you to join us in helping solve this crisis of homelessness by voting “Yes” on Measure A.
Most Reverend Patrick J. McGrath
Bishop, Diocese of San Jose
Board Chair, Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County
Khanh Duy Russo
Board President, Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County
If Bishop McGrath supports raising property taxes on residents and businesses in order to fund this bond measure, why doesn’t he volunteer the diocese’s properties to be assessed taxes to contribute to the effort?
This measure will be too little, too late and too misguided. By the time the affordable housing units are built, even more people will have been displaced due to increasing costs of housing, and there will be another appeal to raise taxes.
The looming megadrought will take care of the problem by making California unable to support its population and industry, and there will be a mass exodus out of the state.
“This November each of us, who are registered voters, will have the opportunity to vote our consciences informed by Catholic social teaching ..” (Bp McGrath’s letter).
“WikiLeaks: Podesta and Left-Wing Activist Plot ‘Catholic Spring’:
Longtime Clinton confidante discussed infiltrating the Catholic Church with progressive ideology to foment revolution.”
Hillary Clinton’s current campaign chairman John Podesta and a Left-wing activist casually discussed fomenting “revolution” in the Catholic Church.
https://www.lifezette.com/polizette/wikileaks-podesta-left-wing-activist-plot-catholic-spring/
” ‘There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church,’ Sandy Newman, president and founder of the progressive nonprofit Voices for Progress, writes to Podesta in an email titled “Opening for a Catholic Spring? ” ‘
“In response, Podesta assures Newman to rest easy for he and his progressive pals have already created organizations explicitly designed to infiltrate the Catholic Church with progressive ideology.”
No surprise. The US Church’s foundations are rotten to the core with operatives, some of whom patrol this website.
Sawyer, you may be correct. But, as I heard a teacher on TED on evening: “So what? What now.” Yes the conditions exist to increase the number of homeless. So what? What now? Right now, we need to feed and clothe thousands of families that cannot afford to live in a decent home, feed their family, etc. even though the have full time jobs. What Now? How do we feed them and get them shelter until they can get jobs, find money for first and last month’s rent, buy gas, clothes for the kids to attend school? What do we do now? What would Jesus do?
Maybe people who can’t afford to live in CA should move where it’s more affordable.
Maybe CA welcoming millions of illegal immigrants has exacerbated the housing problem.
Maybe the Bay Area’s environmentalist-approved, restrictive development laws and open-space areas deemed off-limits for residential development have caused the housing problem.
Maybe a significant portion of the homeless are mentally ill and drug abusers.
I don’t know what Jesus would do. I know what I would do: get the heck out of Dodge.
The Church should encourage people to leave and not to move to the Bay Area. That would be the most effective solution based in reality. The Bay Area is too crowded.
I think the tech bubble will burst or deflate and all the little 20-something techies will move on to the next boom town. The owner of the deli I work out of says she will NEVER charge $4.00 for a piece of toast!
The San Jose bishop has crossed the line–he is directly involved in politics. Does the ends justify the means? Bishop McGrath, preach subsidiarity, don’t practice politics.
In October 2012 Bishop McGrath issued a statement supporting the San Jose City ordinance to increase the minimum wage. CalCatholic carried the story. The measure passed.
In that statement, the bishop argued for the increase because people couldn’t survive on their low wages. Four years later it’s the same story but this time the proposed solution is a tax increase to fund so-called “affordable” housing.
There are economic dynamics at work that are only worsened by meddling with economic forces in an attempt to control them. Artificially increasing wages (via minimum wage) and artificially reducing housing (via development restrictions) have contributed to the problems.
The best advice for people struggling in the Bay Area is…
Simply another manifestation of Christo-Marxism. The Church has NO moral authority to teach on such matters. Basing your argument on the command by Christ to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters does not justify Leviathan government. Housing prices are based upon market factors, too few units plus high demand (H1B visa types?) equals high prices.
Three more quick points
1. No one has an inherent right to live wherever they want if they can’t afford it. I want to live in Beverly Hills, where’s my housing subsidy?
2. Generally, Catholic prelates tend to oppose private companies building enough housing units to meet demand; these enviro activist clerics almost always side with fellow green nazis under the specious dodge of…
William, the boxes on my computer have changed, too, have they on yours. I used to be able to fill up the poster’s, but now I cannot even fill it half way. I have no idea how to determine the word limit. Is it my computer or does the CCD format now have poster boxes that are too large for the amount of words we can use?
Continued…not sure if tht was tech glitch or I hit 750 characters, my bad.
“Specious dodge of “preserving open space.”
3. The learned Bishop really should familiarize himself with the principle of subsidiarity.”
William, I agree. Subsidiarity it is. Let each parish build enough housing for its destitute people. If they can’t do it, lets raise it to the next level. Let the Diocese build the housing for the homeless. If they can’t do it, raise it to the next higher level. At some point, the locals can’t do it and it takes a larger entity to get it done. But, that takes tax money and now we have a proposition on the ballot. Second, you are correct that everyone does not have the right to live where they want to live. But they do have a God-given right to a decent place to live. Hopefully it is close to employment services, mental health care, etc.California does not have facilities for mental health patients. Governor Reagan shut them…
Bob One and his leftist propaganda strikes again. Mental Institutions were shut down beginning with the 1967 Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, establishing a bill of rights for the mentally ill. At that time, mental health “experts” and the Courts moved to empty mental hospitals and replace them with community-based treatment solutions. The result: an unprecedented increase in homelessness, community resistance to neighborhood treatment programs, and the Legislators failure to approve adequate funding. Now, those same “experts” and the Courts want to empty the prisons.
gravey, you are correct about the 1967 Lanterman etal Act. It was passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Reagan. That is not leftist propaganda, but facts. Did they, the legislature, provide the money to replace the mental health hospitals? No and still don’t provide enough money. That is not propaganda, but fact. Our mentally challenged people are on the streets with inadequate assistance and its getting worse every day. There is hardly any care for alcohol and drug abusers available on the streets. Facts, not propaganda. We the people elect the legislature and let them abrogate their responsibility to the people in need. Why don’t we elect some Republicans to clean up the mess?
Bob One, at that time there were people in the institutions that did not want to be there, and there were lawyers who were willing to sue the cities over it for a portion of the money their client got from the lawsuit. I remember an article about one lawyer who sued a city and got a lot of money for one client, but soon she was back on the streets after having lost it all. I think the article was on the Jewish World Review and was written by the Mayor of New York City at that time. Ed Koch comes to mind, but I am not sure.
Yes, it was Ed Koch. Just google “Ed Koch Articles about the mentally ill on the streets”, and all those old articles will come up, and you can see what the cities were up against.
It was the ACLU who was suing the city in most or all cases.
” A God given right to a decent place to live ” since when ? and where is that in Catholic teaching as to who pays for it ?. Do they have a “God given” responsibility to make reasonable life choices based on their income and circumstances ?. Sadly the church ignores and has contempt for the free market which provides better solutions to these problems . As others have posted the problem is more then likely rooted in governmental restrictions , the free market does a better job at addressing needs and wants then the government ever could.
The Catholic Church, has consistently taught, based on the Bible and the teachings of the Popes, that humans have the right to good jobs, union representation, good wages, food to sustain them and places to live. That is just the start of the teachings. There is much more. Everyone has a God given right to these basics, as well as good basic health care. The Church has taught that for generations and centuries. Yes, they have a God given right!
Bob One, some people cannot be helped if they do not want to be helped. It is just that simple. That is why the Lord said, “The poor you will have with you always.” Some will only be helped when they finally “hit bottom”, and others will just go on doing what they are doing until it kills them, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. I knew a woman during the Clinton administration whom the welfare department offered to train for office work, but her excuse was, “I could never work all day in an office,” so she suffered the consequences.
I.e., abandon the word to wait tables.
What would Jesus do? Hmm. Well, he didn’t say pick up your sword and steal from property owners to fund the housing needs of others. There’s no charity, no true caring, no authentic love, in violence or the threat of violence. A government program doesn’t spring “from the heart.” Wrong does not make Right. Vote NO on Measure A.
Bishop McGrath should rather focus his efforts on improving the Catholic identity of San Jose’s Catholic schools, especially the high schools, which are institutions of heresy and leftist propaganda.
One of the groups John Podesta’s e-mails prove is a secular atheist Clinton front-group is Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good: but several of their officers came from the US Bishops’ Conference, listed by Philip Lawler (Catholic World Report):
•Alexia Kelley worked for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development before she became founding director of CACG. (She later moved to the Obama White House staff.)
•John Gehring was assistant media director for the US bishops’ conference, then became media director for CACG, then moved over to Faith in Public Life.
•Tom Chabolla also worked for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, then joined the advisory board of CACG.
•Francis X. Doyle, once the associate general secretary…
•Francis X. Doyle, once the associate general secretary of the US bishops’ conference, became the treasurer-secretary of CACG.
Source: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=1366
“Thus the CACG drew much of its leadership from within the staff of the US bishops’ conference. Presumably they held much the same views, and worked toward much the same goals, while they were employed by the American hierarchy. If they are “anti-Catholic,” then it seems “anti-Catholicism” has found sanctuary and support from our bishops. Make of that what you will.” – Philip Lawler
NB: “Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good” (CACG) should not be confused with a loyal, completely different, Catholic org called “Catholics for the Common Good”