Homeless people and abandoned houses

Being from the Third World and working right now with migrant workers from impoverished neighboring countries, I could not resist posting this quote from Jurgen Moltmann. We are working everyday with poor migrant workers, homeless, exploited, and most of the times abused. Their plight is a result of many factors like political oppression, economic privation and possibly religious persecution. Here, the migrants are homeless while there are hundreds of beautiful “row houses” which are abandoned, apparently left by their rich owners to live in the beautiful suburb.

Even though with the NASA spaceships we stand on the roof of the world, so to speak, when night comes we return to the world underground cellars. The one watches the clock and ‘hasn’t any time’; the other is on the streets and has no place. The person who is without a country is usually without a home too, the person without a home becomes restless and stranger in a hostile world. To a large extent, over population engenders the mass of surplus people who have to emigrate if they want to survive. Millions in the countries of the Third World have become migrants without either country or home. In the societies of the industrial West, the problem of the homeless is not a housing problem or a matter of an ‘overload boat.” this is an anti-social policy of pushing people out… In the reports of an Open-Door community in Atlanta, Georgia, I read that (1) Housing precedes life, housing precedes employment, housing is a human right. (2) But keeping countless people homeless meant that a cheap labour pool of disposable people is always available, because these people have no country, family, or other ties.

Jurgen Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, p126

The photo is from www. irrawaddy.org