Wisconsin official blames homelessness on "sin," then votes against aid for the poor

Jeff Weigand, a conservative Christian, said before his vote that sin was the "root cause" of homelessness

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On April 4, the Dane County Board in Wisconsin (which includes the city of Madison) proposed giving a $231,005 grant to Porchlight, a non-profit organization that helps the homeless by providing them with shelters, food, access to telehealth, and more. Seemed like a no-brainer. In fact, only one board member, Jeff Weigand, stood up to oppose the proposal.

Dane County Supervisor Jeff Weigand on April 4, 2024 (screenshot via YouTube)

He explained that his problem was that Porchlight wasn’t addressing the root cause of homelessness, therefore this grant was just putting a short-term bandage on the wound.

“For every dollar that we invest in providing someone a temporary place to sleep,” he said, “we should be investing an equal amount, or putting an equal amount of energy, towards finding solutions towards the root cause.”

There was a follow-up from fellow supervisor Anthony Gray: What do you think is the root cause of homelessness?

Weigand, clearly expecting this question, responded with a smile: “Sin.”

Sin is the root cause. Please record it… Sin is the root cause.

When God created this world, there was no sin. He created a perfect world. Man ruined that by sinning, and we've seen the depravity and the decline of our world ever since then. So when we talk about the root cause, if you really want to go back to why we have mental health issues, to why we have greed, to why we have people being mean to other people, it's sin.

And until we address that issue, we're going to continue to see this issue of homelessness and a whole slate of other issues in our society. So thank you for asking the question.

It’s not just a pointless answer. It’s a completely impractical one. (Look at the reaction of the lady behind Weigand immediately after he finishes his speech. She speaks for everyone.)

For starters, even if you believe in that biblical nonsense, there’s literally no way to resolve the issue. How do you fix sin?! Blame Eve all you want; you can’t force her to un-eat a piece of fruit. Which means that Weigand presumably wants taxpayer dollars spent on converting people to Christianity rather than helping them with any pressing needs. Not only would that be illegal, the board would be turning its back on helping the community—the one job members were elected to do.

Suppose they did put money towards fixing the “sin” problem, though, somehow. What should the community do in the meantime when it comes to assisting people with mental health struggles, homelessness, or “being mean”? Nothing, if people like Weigand had his way. They’ve done enough.

Is a switch going to magically flip on after one week of the Sin Initiative and solve all the problems? Of course not. The most Christian states in America have the highest gun death rates, worst health care, and least education. More Jesus has never been the solution to anything.

Weigand is also making a crass and misguided assumption that the unhoused people who could benefit from Porchlight’s generosity are struggling because of sin, as if they brought this upon themselves. The sad truth about homelessness is that it’s not often the result of personal failures but rather larger systemic problems. At the local level, giving a grant to a non-profit that helps the homeless is one important way to address concerns. (Building affordable housing, for example, is another.)

Elected officials have an obligation to use the resources they have to help the people who need it. They should be basing their decisions on data. For a county supervisor to pretend that a lack of religion is the biggest problem everyone faces is an admission that he has no business in elected office. He should be wasting a church’s time, not wasting a seat that could go to someone who actually cares about the people in Dane County.

When non-profit news outlet Madison365 asked Weigand to explain his callous thinking, he told them his own church (which he refused to name) helps the poor and addresses sin.

He also casually pointed out that the help is not unconditional. Anyone who wanted food, clothing, or housing assistance had to learn about Jesus first.

“That’s the model that I think works the best because the church individuals, people one on one, can determine the difference between someone that wants to continue to make poor decisions, and someone that doesn’t, someone that truly wants to turn their life around,” he said.

He said no one the church helps has to believe in God, but does have to attend a Bible study.

“If we’re going to physically give you help, we’re going to do a Bible study with you,” he said. “You don’t have to believe it, you can sit there and and check the box. But we are going to because we believe that that’s the true solution. We’re also not going to turn someone away if they have a physical need. If you have a physical need, come on in. We just ask you sit through this Bible study. If you don’t want to listen, that’s fine.”

Spiritual coercion. That’s how his church does it. If people don’t want to waste their time in Bible study, Weigand’s church would rather see them starve.

Anthony Gray, the supervisor who asked Weigand what the root cause of homelessness was, lashed out against his cruelty in a follow-up interview:

“It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth time that it dawned on me what he was actually saying,” Gray said in an interview Monday. “Once I figured it out, I realized how vile and disgusting it was to blame homelessness on the unhoused … I knew that if I opened the door for him … he would stop talking in dog whistles and speak truth.”

Gray, who called himself “a practicing Episcopalian,” said he disagrees with Weigand’s view of both sin and the causes of homelessness.

“The reason people are homeless is because they don’t have homes,” he said. “The reason people have mental illness is because they’re sick … blaming the victim is the coward’s way out.”

Damn right. Gray gave Weigand the opening he needed to fall right into a trap of his own making. Trying to explain Christian logic to people who aren’t predisposed to say “Amen” never goes over well.

Another supervisor, Dana Pellebon, added that Weigand’s remarks contained a racial element, too. After all, many of the unhoused people in Dane County are Black, and if you want to talk about root causes for racism, it wouldn’t be hard to find a religious component in there.

“If he really wants to talk about the root causes, if he wants to talk about sin, then he needs to go back in history and look at the root causes of how it is that Black folks are treated and the sins that were perpetrated against us.”

If Weigand got what he wanted on the Dane County Board, people who are suffering in the community would continue to suffer, all while he smirks at their misery. Just as Jesus taught him, apparently.

Thank goodness everyone else on the Dane County Board had a heart and voted in favor of the grant. (It’s not the first time something like this has happened either. In 2023, Dane County officials voted to make their county a sanctuary for trans and non-binary people. Weigand was the only supervisor to vote against it.)

It’s not just the other officials who rejected Weigand’s thoughtless comments. Dozens of local religious leaders penned an open letter denouncing his words:

Supervisor Weigand, we write to you, in the spirit of Pilate’s wife, to call on you to be more careful with your words concerning the community’s oppressed and marginalized. It has come to our collective attention that you indicated in your official capacity that “sin is the root cause of homelessness.” Not only is this statement deeply hurtful and divisive in our community, it is simply wrong and certainly contradicts the teachings of Jesus Christ.

…

… Jesus did not see unhoused people as sinful and problematic, rather he continually characterizes theologies like yours that infer that only bad and sinful people are unhoused, as problematic. 

On a side note, Weigand just won re-election to the Dane County Board by a mere 156 votes. In 2022, after comfortably winning a special election the year before, he won his first full term to the board by just 33 votes.

Voting matters. Don’t vote for Christian Nationalists at any level or you’re going to end up with faith-based buffoons in charge of making decisions that affect everyone. They’ve repeatedly shown they’re incapable of handling that responsibility.

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