Disregarding The Body – Podcast
The Crisis of our Time
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art
Companion Posts
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Starting Again
I was born in the sixties. But I am not a child of the 60’s. My family was lower-middle class, and by the standards of the time, traditional in most every way. Dad was a minister. If he or mom had lived into their 90’s they would not have imagined the social changes we have witnessed in the last 20 years. It would be too easy to say the sexual revolution of the 60’s caused all this change, as some conservatives maintain. But the roots of this change go back much further than the swinging 60’s.
So I’m embarking with some misgivings on a survey of cultural history. There are deep intellectual and cultural traditions that have shaped our everyday lives. We’ve come to a point in the Western world where the statement “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” is comprehensible to many public leaders, at least in public. That phrase would be completely incomprehensible to my parent’s generation, in public or private, not to mention every preceding generation. It is still incomprehensible to many, if not most people today. But if you express your bewilderment in public, say at many workplaces in the Western world, increasingly the odds are you will be regarded as stupid, immoral or worse. You may be reprimanded for your irrational “phobia.” You might even have your career derailed. If you broadcast your view on a public forum, say Twitter, expect the Twitterati to pounce with the ferocity of a caged unfed Tiger. In certain parts of the world you may even be charged with a hate-crime for your expressed incredulity at the latest massive cultural shift. (See the following posts, here & here.)
As a 60’s poet might say, “The times they are a changin.”
The tectonic cultural shift in the last 20 years is quite breathtaking. Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, we have gone from year 2000 where the majority of Americans were opposed to gay marriage to today where normalization of Transgenderism is fast approaching.
A long and winding road brought us to this point. I want to offer a thoughtful and hopefully generous exposition, from a Classic Christian point of view, of how we got here. As I go, I’ll be documenting some disturbing current events. (Read my next post). I hope that even those who disagree with Classic Christianity will find here a fair and readable assessment of our state of affairs. (post continues page 2)
When Compassion Becomes Neglect: California’s Homelessness Lesson
Why good intentions, enormous spending, and permissive policies are not enough.
In my previous article, I examined Republican gubernatorial candidate, Steve Hilton’s proposal to address California’s homelessness crisis, which he calls Off the Streets and Back on Track. His plan combines shelter, medical care, addiction treatment, psychiatric services, job training, and assistance finding permanent housing with a renewed commitment to enforcing public camping laws.
I argued that this approach reflects an important Christian principle: genuine compassion sometimes requires intervention, responsibility, and the restoration of order.
But I want to go a little further.
Because California’s experience raises a rather uncomfortable question: How can a state spend tens of billions of dollars helping homeless people and still have so many people living on its streets?
And perhaps more importantly, why do we so often assume that spending more money is evidence of greater compassion?
The $24 Billion Question
Between fiscal years 2018–19 and 2022–23, California allocated nearly $24 billion to homelessness and housing programs. That’s billion with a B.
According to a 2024 California State Auditor’s report, nine state agencies administered at least 30 programs dedicated to preventing and ending homelessness.
And what did the auditors discover?
California frequently lacked the information necessary to determine whether its programs were actually working.
Of five programs examined, two appeared cost-effective. For the other three, the state had not collected sufficient data to evaluate their effectiveness.
Think about that.
Billions of dollars spent, and the government couldn’t adequately account for the results of major portions of its efforts.
I’ve made this argument before, particularly in discussions with my progressive Christian friends: Good stewardship is not optional for Christians.
When we give money to a charity, we reasonably expect evidence that the money is helping people. Why should we expect less when government spends billions of dollars taken from taxpayers?
The question isn’t whether California cares enough to spend money.
It’s whether California cares enough to find out what works.
When Government Makes Housing Unaffordable
Here’s another uncomfortable reality.
California’s extraordinarily high housing costs are not simply the unfortunate consequence of market forces. Government policy contributes to them.
Restrictive zoning, lengthy environmental reviews, permitting delays, development fees, and complicated regulatory requirements all increase the cost of building housing.
And when housing becomes prohibitively expensive, people living on the financial margins are the first to suffer.
Although the following example concerns California’s high-speed rail boondoggle (a government jobs program masquerading as a transportation project) it vividly illustrates the broader problem of excessive regulation, particularly in California.
Cali Bullet Train FACTS: Approximately $15.7 billion in baseline program expenditures (as of July 31, 2026); zero miles of high-speed track laid; and roughly 18 years since voter approval (or ~30 years since the Authority’s creation).
A major University of California, San Francisco, study found that unaffordable housing was a central factor in people’s pathways into homelessness. Participants reported a median monthly household income of just $960 in the six months before becoming homeless.
The irony is difficult to miss.
Government restricts housing production, housing becomes more expensive, more people struggle to afford shelter, and then government spends enormous sums attempting to address the resulting crisis.
This isn’t an argument for eliminating reasonable environmental protections or building standards.
It’s an argument for recognizing that regulations have consequences, including consequences for the poor.
According to the California State Auditor, newly constructed affordable housing in some parts of the Bay Area can cost as much as $1 million per unit.
Imagine how many people could be helped if the cost of producing housing were substantially reduced.
And imagine what that might mean for taxpayers, charitable organizations, and the people desperately needing somewhere to live.
Housing First—and Then What?
California has also embraced a policy framework called Housing First.
The underlying idea is understandable: provide stable housing without first requiring sobriety, employment, or participation in treatment. Once people have a roof over their heads, other problems may become easier to address.
For some people, this works.
A family facing eviction because of a temporary financial setback may need little more than rental assistance and an opportunity to regain stability.
But consider someone with a severe methamphetamine addiction, untreated schizophrenia, or a long history of living on the streets.
Housing alone will not adequately address those conditions.
And treating every homeless person as though the primary problem is simply the absence of an apartment risks misunderstanding the complexity of the crisis.
Critics of California’s homelessness policies, including researchers at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, have questioned whether the state’s approach adequately addresses addiction, mental illness, and other factors contributing to chronic homelessness.
A more comprehensive approach must distinguish among very different circumstances and provide different forms of assistance.
For some, that means affordable housing.
For others, intensive psychiatric treatment.
For others, addiction recovery.
For still others, job training, family reconciliation, and help rebuilding ordinary routines of responsibility.
Compassion requires understanding the actual problem—not merely applying the same policy to everyone.
Addiction, Mental Illness, and the Limits of Autonomy
Research from the University of California, San Francisco, makes the challenge unmistakable.
Its Behavioral Health and Homelessness report found that approximately 48% of surveyed homeless adults had complex behavioral-health needs, including regular drug use, heavy drinking, hallucinations, or recent psychiatric hospitalization.
Thirty-five percent reported regular illicit drug use.
Perhaps most troubling, 28% of respondents with regular drug use or heavy alcohol use had sought treatment during their current episode of homelessness but couldn’t access it.
What kind of compassionate society tolerates that?
One that speaks endlessly about respecting autonomy while failing to provide meaningful opportunities for recovery?
Certainly, civil liberties matter.
But Christian anthropology offers a richer understanding of human freedom than merely allowing people to do whatever they happen to desire.
A person enslaved by addiction is not flourishing in freedom.
A person suffering from untreated psychosis is not necessarily exercising meaningful autonomy simply because government leaves him alone.
Sometimes protecting human dignity requires more than respecting someone’s immediate wishes.
It requires helping restore the conditions in which genuine freedom becomes possible.
When Good Intentions Produce Bad Consequences
California’s experience with Proposition 47 offers another cautionary lesson.
Approved by voters in 2014, the measure reduced penalties for certain drug possession and theft offenses.
Its supporters hoped to reduce unnecessary incarceration and redirect resources toward more constructive responses.
Those are understandable objectives.
But a 2026 study by the Public Policy Institute of California found evidence that Proposition 47 likely contributed to approximately 7,000 additional people experiencing unsheltered homelessness between 2015 and 2019.
Researchers also estimated that the measure contributed to a roughly 20% decline in drug-treatment admissions, associated with fewer referrals from the criminal justice system.
These are statistical estimates, not a claim that Proposition 47 alone caused California’s homelessness crisis. But they raise serious questions about the unintended consequences of well-intentioned reforms.
A policy can emerge from sincere concern for suffering people and still make their circumstances worse.
And when that happens, acknowledging failure is not cruelty.
It is a moral obligation.
A More Christian Understanding of Compassion
I return to something I’ve been emphasizing for months.
The Christian obligation to care for the poor is unequivocal.
But Scripture does not tell us that compassion requires a particular government program, an ever-expanding budget, or the suspension of ordinary expectations about personal responsibility.
Those are matters requiring wisdom and prudential judgment.
The Good Samaritan didn’t merely express sympathy for the injured traveler.
He acted.
He provided immediate care, transported the man somewhere safe, and arranged for continued assistance.
Le Bon Samaritain, Rembrandt, 1632-1633.
His compassion was concrete, costly, and directed toward recovery.
That is the standard I would like to see reflected in our public policies.
Help people get off the streets.
Provide appropriate treatment.
Make housing more affordable.
Restore public spaces to their intended uses.
Measure results.
Hold government and nonprofit contractors accountable.
And enlist the tremendous resources of private philanthropy, churches, and community organizations.
None of this guarantees success. Any serious alternative, including Hilton’s, must demonstrate that it can deliver appropriate care, respect civil liberties, and produce better outcomes.
But surely we can agree that perpetually managing human misery is not the same thing as overcoming it.
In my previous article, I suggested that California’s extraordinary private wealth could become a powerful resource if philanthropists had confidence that their contributions would produce meaningful results.
I still believe that.
And I would like to see California test a comprehensive approach that joins public responsibility, private generosity, personal recovery, and measurable accountability.
The objective should not be simply to make homelessness less visible.
It should be to help homeless people become homeless no longer.
That’s a far more demanding understanding of compassion.
And, I would argue, a far more Christian one.
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We Don’t Have To Live Like This
Getting People Off the Streets Is Compassion, Too
I have no idea whether Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate for governor of California, is a Christian. And frankly, for purposes of what I want to say here, it doesn’t matter very much.
What interests me is his recently released proposal for dealing with California’s homelessness crisis, because I think it illustrates something Christians must think about more carefully: What does compassion actually require?
Hilton calls his proposal “Off the Streets and Back on Track.” The basic idea is remarkably straightforward. California would build a network of Homeless Recovery Centers where people currently living on streets, sidewalks, parks, and encampments could receive shelter, food, showers, medical attention, addiction treatment, psychiatric care, job training, and help moving into permanent housing.
Families, women, veterans, and elderly residents would have separate secure accommodations. People struggling with drug addiction would be offered treatment. Those suffering from serious mental illness would receive appropriate psychiatric care. Those capable of working would be connected with community colleges, apprenticeship programs, employers, and job training. Caseworkers would help individuals move toward stable housing and continue providing care when necessary.
And then comes the other half of the proposal—the half that will undoubtedly make some people uncomfortable.
The encampments would be cleared.
Public camping laws would once again be enforced. If a safe and appropriate place is available, declining that help would not confer a permanent right to occupy a sidewalk, public park, or street.
I find that combination—not one half without the other—very important.
Compassion and Order Are Not Enemies
For years now, I have been arguing with some of my progressive Christian friends about what we mean when we use words like compassion, justice, and care for the poor.
Christians are unquestionably commanded to care for the suffering.
There is no wiggle room there.
The widow, the orphan, the poor, the stranger, the sick, the prisoner, the abandoned—Scripture repeatedly directs our attention toward people who are vulnerable. A Christianity that simply walks past suffering and says, “Not my problem,” is difficult to reconcile with Jesus.
Le Bon Samaritain, Rembrandt, 1632-1633.
But something else does not follow from that.
The Bible does not hand us a state budget.
It does not specify the proper size of Medicaid, the correct marginal tax rate, how much California should spend on homelessness, whether housing should come before addiction treatment, or under what circumstances someone suffering from serious mental illness should be compelled to receive care.
Those are questions of prudence.
Compassion tells us that the person sleeping beneath an overpass matters. Prudence asks: What will actually help him?
And those are not always the same question.
R. R. Reno recently made a related point while discussing immigration. Pastoral language about welcoming or accompanying people may express a genuine Christian moral concern, but it does not by itself tell governing authorities where limits should be drawn or how competing obligations should be balanced. Governments still have to govern.
The same principle applies here.
Is Leaving Someone in a Tent Compassionate?
Consider the strange situation we have created.
A man is living beneath a tarp. He may be addicted to fentanyl. He may suffer from schizophrenia. He hasn’t bathed in weeks. He is vulnerable to assault, disease, exploitation, overdose, heat, cold, and predatory drug dealers.
One “enlightened” response amounts to:
Here is a clean needle. Here is some food. Here is a blanket. We will respect your autonomy. Good luck.
Is that compassion or abandonment dressed in compassionate language?
Hilton’s proposal takes a different approach. Get the person inside. Feed him. Give him a bed and a shower. Find out what is wrong. Treat the addiction. Treat the mental illness. Help him acquire skills. Help him find employment if he is capable of it. Help him eventually find stable housing.
And, yes, establish some expectations along the way.
That strikes me as a much richer understanding of human dignity.
Human beings possess dignity precisely because they are more than bundles of immediate desires. We are embodied creatures capable of relationships, responsibility, work, recovery, community, and—in Christian terms—redemption.
Sometimes love comforts.
Sometimes love intervenes.
Often it does both.
Twenty-Four Billion Dollars Should Buy Accountability
There is another part of Hilton’s proposal that connects directly with something I have been writing about for months: government spending is not the same thing as compassion.
California allocated nearly $24 billion to homelessness and housing between fiscal years 2018–19 and 2022–23. That number does not come from a partisan campaign advertisement. It appears in the California State Auditor’s own report.
And what did the auditor find?
Not that every program was worthless. In fact, two of the five programs examined appeared to be cost-effective.
But the auditors could not adequately evaluate three of the five because California had not collected sufficient outcome data. The state had also failed to consistently track costs and results across its homelessness efforts.
Think about that.
Billions upon billions of dollars—and government often could not confidently tell taxpayers what was working.
I’ve made this point before: Christian stewardship should care about that too.
If I give $1,000 to a charity claiming to feed hungry children and discover that nobody is checking whether children are actually being fed, asking questions about the money does not demonstrate my lack of compassion.
It demonstrates stewardship.
Why should $24 billion of taxpayers’ money be morally different?
The proper measure cannot simply be: How much did we spend?
The question is: Did suffering decrease? Did people recover? Did they remain housed? Did addicts become sober? Did mentally ill people receive treatment? Did families get back on their feet?
Hilton proposes auditing homelessness spending, publishing costs and outcomes, and redirecting money away from programs that repeatedly fail toward treatment and recovery programs that produce measurable results.
That ought not be a left-wing or right-wing principle.
It is common sense.
Neither Cruelty Nor Sentimentality
The fundamental principle: We do not have to choose between abandoning people on the streets and abandoning public order.
A civilized society should be capable of saying two things simultaneously.
You may not live indefinitely on this sidewalk.
And:
We are not going to abandon you.
Come inside.
Here is a bed.
Here is food.
Here is medical care.
Here is addiction treatment.
Here is psychiatric treatment.
Here is job training.
Here is someone whose job is to help you get back on your feet.
But no, we are not going to pretend that living in a tent while addicted, mentally ill, sick, exploited, and isolated represents some higher form of human autonomy that the rest of society is morally obligated to preserve.
That isn’t compassion.
There is a distinctly Christian insight here.
Christian love never means simply affirming another human being exactly where he happens to be and then walking away. We meet people where they are because they bear the image of God.
But we love them too much to insist that they remain there.
For California’s homeless, perhaps genuine compassion begins with something as concrete as this:
Come in off the street. Let’s help you get your life back.
Addendum: A Role for Private Generosity
One final thought. I’m confident that many of the tech titans who call San Francisco and Silicon Valley home would be willing to make substantial charitable contributions toward solving this crisis—if they had good reason to believe their money would actually make a difference.
But there’s another economic reality California’s political leadership would be wise to consider. Wealthy individuals and businesses can relocate, and California’s high taxes and recurring proposals for additional wealth taxes create incentives for them to do precisely that.
This is something advocates of wealth taxes, including those aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), don’t understand. Wealth today is not primarily land, as it was centuries ago. Much of it consists of financial assets, intellectual property, business ownership, and highly mobile capital. People can move, companies can relocate, and investment can flow elsewhere. Not without complications, of course, but much more readily than a landed estate could move in the eighteenth century.
And when wealthy entrepreneurs leave, California risks losing more than tax revenue. It can also lose jobs, investment, civic leadership, and substantial philanthropic resources.
California still has extraordinary private wealth and philanthropic potential. But government policies that discourage wealth creation or encourage its departure also diminish the very resources available to address problems like homelessness.
Imagine what might happen if government, private philanthropy, churches, and charitable organizations worked together around a serious, transparent, results-oriented plan. Not simply managing homelessness, but actually helping people escape it.
Accountability doesn’t discourage generosity. It gives generosity a reason to flourish. And sound economic policy helps preserve the wealth that makes such generosity possible.
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We Don’t Have To Live Like This
Christian Compassion, Democratic Socialism, and the Politics of Prudence
[Response to a Christian Sister]
Conservative Christians like me care about the same things you just listed, and we show it by what we actually do. We don’t want to abolish the social safety net. We do want to reduce the fraud, abuse, and waste within it, and we want immigration to be legal and orderly. Is that really too much to ask? It simply isn’t true that Republicans or conservatives don’t care about migrants, the homeless, the working poor, or elderly people struggling on fixed incomes. I’ve written about this in some detail.
But, Sis, I think you’ve missed one of the major themes I’ve been writing about over the last six months, particularly regarding the DSA.
The Democratic Socialists of America are not simply advocating Scandinavian-style social democracy or a somewhat larger American safety net. They explicitly describe capitalism as a system that must be replaced, and their own documents call for a radical restructuring of American political and economic life. Their analysis of “structural oppression” focuses heavily on capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy, and their political program includes proposals to abolish the Senate, fundamentally replace the presidency, and radically restructure the Supreme Court. I’ve laid all of this out in an extended blog post using the DSA’s own documents.
So when I make the Marxist connection, I’m not saying that supporting food banks, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing assistance, or help for the working poor makes somebody a Marxist. Of course it doesn’t. I support a social safety net too.
I’m talking about a particular political movement with a particular understanding of capitalism, class, power, oppression, and the structure of American government.
People supporting politicians such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Mamdani in New York, or even AOC—who apparently isn’t radical enough for some of the DSA’s foot soldiers—are participating in a political movement that is arguing for considerably more than preserving a safety net for people in need. And consider this: AOC has publicly declared that “billionaires should not exist.” Not that billionaires should pay higher taxes, mind you, but that they shouldn’t exist as a class of extraordinarily wealthy individuals. And she’s not radical enough for some of the DSA? Really?
FOR THE RECORD: AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Zohran Mamdani have all publicly argued that billionaires should not exist. They aren't merely debating how generously we should fund Social Security, Medicare, or food assistance. They're raising much more fundamental questions about the legitimacy of private wealth and the economic arrangements that produce it.
And this is why I resist the idea that “progressive Christian” compassion somehow occupies the moral high ground. Everything you listed—making disciples, proclaiming the Word, serving the poor, caring for migrants, helping the homeless, supporting the elderly—is important to me too. Conservative Christians do those things every day. People who vote the way you vote are not unique in that regard. It would be deeply unfair to say that conservatives simply don’t care about the poor.
Where we differ is largely over prudential questions: what government should do, what civil society and churches should do, how much government should spend, what immigration laws should be enforced, and which economic system actually does the best job of creating the prosperity that makes generosity possible.
And then I add some moral concerns that I believe contemporary progressivism badly neglects: defending the most vulnerable human beings among us, children in the womb; resisting gender ideology and its deeply distorted understanding of the human body; defending religious liberty; preserving economic freedom and the market economy; and confronting the astonishing growth of government spending and debt. We’re approaching $40 trillion in national debt. At some point, stewardship matters too.
Put all of those things together and, yes, you begin voting more like I vote.
That doesn’t mean I think Donald Trump is beyond criticism. Far from it. He presents what you might call a target-rich environment. There is plenty about him that I dislike, and conservatives should be willing to say so.
But I also don’t think our dislike of Trump should blind us to what is happening on the ideological left. The DSA is an increasingly influential activist force within the Democratic coalition, and its ideas deserve to be examined on their own merits—not treated as though they amount to nothing more than wanting a stronger safety net.
So I’m not choosing between Christian compassion and conservative politics. I’m trying to think about politics more holistically: compassion for the poor, protection of unborn life, the dignity of the human body, economic freedom, fiscal stewardship, religious liberty, ordered immigration, and the proper limits of government.
That may be less “progressive,” but I don’t think it is any less Christian.
Your brother.