— Photo by Andrea Farias
MANCHESTER, Conn.
With an extension of one of his epidemic-related emergency orders, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has saved for another six months the Pacific House homeless shelter in Danbury, just days before it would have had to close because of the expiration of his previous order and the city zoning board's disgraceful refusal to approve the facility.
Thus Connecticut has just barely avoided being shamed by the expulsion of dozens of people into the dead of winter during Christmas week, what would have been a grotesque re-enactment of there being “no room at the inn” as there famously was no room two millennia ago.
But of course the shame may be only postponed. While in the last few years state government sharply reduced homelessness, in recent months it has been rising again as the economy has weakened, inflation has soared, and the poorest and most troubled and demoralized have been most battered.
Getting them out of the cold and into a safe, secure and warm environment with access to medical care and encouragement is again an urgent obligation for state government, even as practically every day state government touts its comfortable financial condition and bestows money on far less compelling projects.
With the new session of the General Assembly convening in a few days, the governor's extended order preserving the Danbury shelter should be only the start of an emergency program to establish more shelters and supportive housing facilities throughout the state and to exempt them from municipal zoning regulations.
With organized religion declining, Connecticut abounds in empty church buildings, some of which are being offered for sale and repurposing, even if repurposing a building with a steeple may create a permanent incongruity for the new occupants.
Organized religion's decline is not just a decline in theology and doctrine but also a decline in community, which can be seen in the worsening social disintegration generally. While in the old days religion could be politically divisive, in recent years in Connecticut it has stressed decency more than doctrine and so should be much missed.
In pursuit of that decency maybe state government should lease some of those former churches for use as shelters and supportive housing, and maybe the neighbors, in danger of being rebuked by the antique architecture for any lack of hospitality, would'’t object.
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A congressional district on Long Island that includes parts of the New York City borough of Queens and neighboring Nassau County on Nov. 8 elected Republican George Santos to Congress. His resume, the New York Times reported last week, is completely phony.
The representative-elect turns out not to be what he claimed during his campaign -- a great scholar with a brilliant record in the financial industry -- but a grifter who fled criminal prosecution in Brazil and has been evicted from apartments in New York for not paying rent.
Of course he should resign his office, and if he refuses, the House of Representatives should expel him. There should be a new election in his district. But even then the country should expect a lot more of this fraud, for it is the consequence of the decline of journalism, which in turn is a consequence of the decline of literacy and civic engagement throughout the country.
After all, creditable as the Times' exposure of the grifter is, where were the newspaper and other news organizations purporting to serve Queens and Nassau County before his election?
Of course The Times was tediously savaging Donald Trump long after his presidential term had ended, just as most major news organizations were doing. But The Times declines to cover its own neighborhood seriously.
Connecticut has no cause to snicker here. While all the members of the state's congressional delegation who were just re-elected have had long careers in public life and have been fully vetted, as Governor Lamont, also just re-elected, has been, the three new state constitutional officers remain almost completely unknown, and the backgrounds of many new state legislators just elected have not been scrutinized independently by vigorous journalism. For there isn't much left.
The new constitutional officers and state legislators may turn out all right. But there is no longer much insurance anywhere against disasters like the one in New York.
Chris Powell (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com) is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
