Rosette Neighborhood Village (RNV), a community of six tiny modular sleeping cabins, welcomes previously unhoused people behind the Amistad Catholic Worker House in New Haven.
I love these people, because I love Jesus, who commanded me to love my neighbor, and to love them in a particularly active way when they are in need. But I do not just love the people at RNV abstractly. It’s a particular love, a love that makes me finally exhale when someone’s biopsy comes back negative, look forward to talking about classic films with a fellow devotee, celebrate job offers, share inside jokes, and take tearful calls from someone who is suffering from a broken relationship. I love them because I know them.
A bill before the legislature, HB 5174, would make it easier for religious groups to build communities like this. Planning and Development has voted the bill out of committee on party lines. This is not surprising, but it in no way captures the absolute ugliness of the debate.
The bill constitutes “a grave violence to the way of life in this state,” objected Rep. Doug Dubitsky (R-47) at Friday’s committee meeting. He warned that “the parade of horribles that would result are endless.” He particularly objected to the prospect of accommodations for unhoused people in small towns.
In a compromise measure, the bill was amended to only apply to municipalities with populations over 25,000. Small towns should not welcome unhoused people because many of these municipalities do not have police forces, he continued. Actually, Rep. Dubitsky, these microneighborhoods will not require extra policing. Homelessness is not a crime. I cannot believe that someone who practices law would not know that.
Unhoused people are not a threat to all that is good and wholesome here in the Land of Steady Habits. I can understand why the representative does not know that. I am willing to bet that he has never had an extended conversation with such a person. Maybe that’s the way of life he is seeking to protect – one where the more materially fortunate can ignore the suffering of our neighbors.
Facilities for unhoused people are concentrated in cities, usually in the most resource-poor areas of those cities. Shelters in particular are hidden away and usually designed with an appalling lack of windows, much like warehouses. The way our society addresses homelessness is to ban people experiencing it from many spaces. This reduces the possibility of human interaction and understanding. It makes love a virtual impossibility.
After Rep. Dubitsky had gone on for an evil while, and branched out into the threat of “illegal aliens,” Rep. Ryan Fazio (R-36) tried to soften his party’s opposition to the bill with a bit of concern trolling about all the services these folks need, which he said 5174 failed to address. Ignoring Rep. Dubitsky’s forays into poverty shaming and nativism, Rep. Fazio said, “Everyone who votes yes or no wants to solve this problem.”
If everyone in the legislature wanted to end homelessness, they already would have. Every session there are bills introduced that would advance the right to fair and affordable housing. And every session they get opposed – because our unhoused neighbors are held up as contagions rather than human beings.
“Love is the only solution, and love comes with community,” Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day said. That’s the motto of Amistad House. I hope that the bill passes so that communities like Rosette Neighborhood Village can be replicated – and so RNV itself has better legal standing. I have no illusions, however, that such projects will spring up all over the state. Only a small minority of faith communities will be motivated to devote the people power and money that an enterprise like this takes.
But those few will give materially fortunate Nutmeggers the extraordinary opportunity to know unhoused people in a deep way, to be in community with them, to see them as something more than a stereotype. Raised Bill 5174 will be a step forward in spreading love, and that truly is the only solution.
Colleen Shaddox is a member of the Rosette Neighborhood Village Collective and co-author of Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding and Ending U.S. Poverty.