I deeply appreciate Bob Lupton’s humility in this chapter. Many years ago he was convinced that creating a neighborhood of low income houses was the way forward for his community. Standing on the higher ground, he fought off the “yuppies’” attempt to force him to sell the land and build a neighborhood of middle to high income homes. He “knew” he was standing on the side of justice.
Fast forward several years and the area is crime ridden and bringing violence to the community. It was a mess and they began to fix it by evicting perpetrators and rehabbing the houses to create a mixed income neighborhood.
Funny enough, I first visited Bob Lupton about 6 months after the rehabbing. It was “the paradigm shift” of their ministry. No more low-income-only housing. Mixed income neighbors in a mixed income neighborhood. It’s wild to think that isolating the poor in single neighborhoods as a matter of public zoning and policy is almost vacated in most cities in our area now. It seems to some degree, governments have learned that this is a bad idea. That said, I don’t think it has hit the private sector yet. Gated communities and small variations in housing costs still reign. People want to be around people with their same economic values. There is a market for it.
So what is the moral value here? I hope that it doesn’t sound odd when I answer the question with the word/concept—beauty. When you stroll or roll around Charlotte, tight-landscaped, large homes, with well-wrapped trees have become the model of beauty in a home and neighborhood. We tear down old buildings to put up well-designed stores with just the right amount of pine straw and parking. And the facades look clean and careful. With all that said, one might say that Charlotteans care too much about beauty—cars, clothes, and homes. But I think just the opposite is true. They don’t care about beauty enough. Beauty is a moral category. Like the wonderful parental instinct that tells a child they are acting “ugly:” wrong behavior is a lack of beauty. So we need to re-evaluate beauty again. Why have we assumed that Wisteria Lane meets the Truman Show is idyllic beauty? Where is our view of diversity—economic and cultural?
It’s odd, we like neighborly beauty the same way the desperate patient likes plastic surgery. It’s a lot of effort for a faux-beauty. Face-lifts are like facades on houses.
So what’s the solution? Well, just like we need a redeemed view of beauty for women—where stretch marks for those who’ve had children are celebrated and not condemned. We need a redeemed view of beauty that will look at smaller houses with older cars as something to be celebrated. If we are convinced that these things are beautiful, then we will value them—with our checkbooks. There will be market for it.
