Police seem to have begun a campaign of aggressive prosecution of the crime of being visible while poor in San Diego. Ticketing those sleeping on the sidewalks for not having housing would seem to represent a new level of moral callousness, except for events of last week when the winter shelters opened. Persons who slept in line overnight to get a spot when the shelter opened were ticketed; those who came too late to secure a spot were ticketed as well. Both groups were guilty of loitering -- they became visible while poor even as they tried to slip into the shelter to become invisible.

Yet loitering itself is a class crime in an attempt to stop the poor from being visible. An all-night line for Chargers playoff tickets would be a sign of civic pride with full media coverage; for the poor trying to secure refuge from the elements of winter with no other options, it is a crime.

Herding the poor into a distinct corner of the city to struggle for the meager resources available by well-meaning agencies is another strategy to keep the poor invisible. Yet downtown development has changed the ability of the poor to stay invisible even in their sequestered corner of America's Finest City.

It has become controversial even for churches to feed the hungry who live in the hotels and on the streets downtown. In walking to a location to eat, the poor commit a crime -- they become visible.

Being visible while poor is a crime because we now live in a society where all of life is market driven. One's ability to consume in the public marketplace determines human worth, dignity and status.

We have discovered that we can treat all of life and life's services as commodities to be traded. Resources flow to the highest bidder. In such a system, the poor cannot win. They just do not have resources to consume.

Moreover, those who have resources go out of their way to avoid encountering the poor; the poor cannot contribute to their accumulation of wealth, they can only challenge it. The bodies of the poor therefore reduce the market value of property and services.

Yet as property values and rents increase in the San Diego area and development causes previously invisible areas to become visible to the propertied, the poor are trapped in a circumstance not of their making: they have no space to remain invisible.

For the good of the market, the poor must be removed from visibility. Thus they are increasingly guilty of their particular crime: being visible while poor.

For Christians, such a situation should be morally unbearable. Not only do we believe that all human beings are created in the image of God, we also confess as Lord, Jesus Christ, who "though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor" (2 Cor. 8:9).

As the Christmas season reminds us, this poverty was so extreme that Jesus was placed in an animal trough at his birth, as his transient mother and stepfather attempted to survive on the streets. For Christians the poor are not a problem to be solved nor criminals waiting to be removed from view -- they are blessed, for theirs is the kingdom of God that we believe God has begun in Jesus (Luke 6:20).

For all members of the San Diego community, it is time to examine the dehumanization of fellow human beings that has arisen as an unintended consequence of the shrinking supply of property. We must remember that economic development is not a good in and of itself. It is a good only in so far as it contributes to the good of sustaining life, all life, not the life of a chosen few.

It is time to mobilize the intellectual, social and economic resources of the region to design a response not solely dictated by strict market forces to recover the conditions for flourishing life here in San Diego.

Dr. Wright is pastor of the English-Speaking Congregation of the Church of the Nazarene in Mid-City. He also is professor of theology and Christian scriptures in the School of Theology and Christian Ministry at Point Loma Nazarene University.