NIMBY in Phoenix: Church Forbidden to Feed the Homeless

What a pain in the ass these homeless people are !

I think the homeless are the only identifiable group left in society specifically targeted to restrict their eating at a particular venue available to the rest. Even children aren’t barred from restaurants although they can be a huge nuisance

You’ve painted all the homeless with a broad brush and this city ordinance punishes them all. It just ain’t right.

There are ways to deal with the troublesome homeless that are employed for others such as rowdy teenagers.

But it’s also not okay to disrespect the personal space of others, and the church and its associate group did that by bringing in specifically disruptive people to the neighborhood. Hell, I kinda think that if it had been a soccer team from the wealthy part of town who showed up at the church, had a free meal, then proceeded to make nuisances of themselves in the neighborhood, there’d be action taken too. It’s just that, the specific circumstances being what they were, the way the community got the church to stop encouraging the disruptive people to come to the neighborhood was through this particular law.

Conversely, had the people who came into the neighborhood been polite and respectful, I don’t think anyone would have cared. Nobody, I guarantee you, nobody stood up and said “Hey, they’re feeding homeless people! On our street! To hell with that!”

Here’s the real world reality: if churches have to rent or buy property somewhere other than their main buildings in order to have a service that will also include a meal (because poor people will be fed and therefore it’s charity) then the people aren’t gonna get fed. The cost will simply be too high. The only cost to the church now is the food, and perhaps not even fully that (I’d imagine that much of it comes from donations) and incidental use of facilities costs. It’s not as if the working, financially solvent members of the congregation can afford to support an infinite amount of outreach, and outreach that can’t be funded ceases to exist.

The intention of any individual is irrelevant. If hymns are being sung and prayers said and communion shared and a sermon preached, it’s pretty clearly a worship service, even if some of the people there are only sitting through all of that to get a meal. The people who are bused in are all staying in halfway houses or other full-time shelters, so it’s a fair bet that many of them could get breakfast elsewhere, anyway.

Interestingly, from looking at about a dozen different news reports and blog posts, it looks like the people “brought in” (meaning the people who come to the service by bus) are in fact, taken right back out again after the service. They’re also all part of some sort of residential program. So they’re homeless by virtue of their lack of a private residence, but they’re not the hanging-in-alleys, peeing-on-geraniums, mumbling-and-shuffling-stinkbomb homeless of stereotype. There are non-sheltered/non-program folks who are coming to this service on bicycles, on foot, and in cars that they appear to be living in. What those folks are doing after the service is unknown. What’s interesting is that many of these people also appear to be coming to the Sunday morning service(s) at the church as well. And again, no one in the neighborhood complained until the bus started coming, while ironically, that’s carrying the people who are least likely to cause any sort of disruption at all.

What we still haven’t seen, at least that I’ve found, is some quantification of how many “incidents” there have been, and how anyone knows that the allegedly homeless people involved are in the community because of the church service.

What a pain in the ass self-righteous, sanctimonious liberals are!

We can’t afford to obey the law, so we should be allowed to disobey the law? There is nothing stopping the Church distributing food to the needy. There is nothing stopping homeless people coming to the services. If the aim is to distribute food to those that need it, there are many ways of doing it at the same cost, or very close. But if the aim is to require the homeless to sit through a sermon to get said pancake breakfast, then I will admit, it might be somewhat harder. But if that is the aim, then I am not going to lose much sleep over it being harder, and if the inability to deliver a sermon prevents the church members from fulfilling their charitable imperative, then I suggest they look inside themselves a little.

I think you are able to return sanctimony admirably.

Would you like to run them out of your neighbourhood too ?

No, it was in answer to the suggestion that they should just go do this “somewhere else.” It’s not a practical solution.

The law is stopping them. This ruling is stopping them, or will, if it’s upheld on appeal. :confused:

And they are.

It seems pretty clear that the aim is to have a worship service and then fellowship with those who come with a nice warm meal. This is something that happens at churches and synagogues and perhaps also mosques all around the country all the time. And that’s what’s problematic: something typical and usual in religious congregations is being specifically quashed because of who is attending.

No one is being compelled to turn up to “sit through” something to get this meal. As I noted earlier, the people who are coming on the bus are coming from residential facilities (halfway houses, bridge housing, mental health and/or addiction programs) where they live full time. They don’t have to get on a bus and go elsewhere to get breakfast. The others who are coming on their own are coming of their own volition. From the various videos, it looks like, as in most church service situations, like all the attendees are, to some degree, participating. Some people actually do enjoy going to church, you know, including homeless people.

What does that even mean? It’s a church service. This has been addressed. This is something different and separate from fulfilling a separate charitable imperative. This is about more than the meal, which is what the court decision is ignoring. They are having a worship service together, a corporate and cooperative act, and fellowshiping with one another over a meal in adjunct to it.

And I get the impression that would be fine, if only some percentage of the gathering wasn’t ruining it for everybody by committing petty crimes in the neighborhood afteward.

Well we’re not certain that this has happened. People see homeless people and have blamed the church for that problem. It would be interesting to know what the incidence of homeless altercations are now that this church is no longer serving this breakfast. Maybe it won’t change anything at all.

I agree it would be. Of course, it could be one incident or a thousand incidents and the law would still be valid, pending review through the appeals process and such.

And if it’s a small handful of incidents, or if those responsible for any actual illegalities aren’t even associated with the homeless congregants at the church, then the congregational business of this faith community will have been interfered with on principle, and at what cost?

Right, and I can understand why it might be enforced that way, but in the end I think it is an unjust law, whether or not it was a fair ruling.

I couldn’t say, but as far as I can tell, the city of Phoenix does have the right to pass and enforce such legislation until such time as a state or federal judge decides they don’t.

Actually this part does not seem clear to me at all.

This leads me to suspect that they’re not just having a worship service with food and that they were operating a charity dining hall. Whether it was a concerted effort on their part to skirt the zoning laws or not I don’t know.

Odesio

But this isn’t a reasonable reading of it. They were having a church worship breakfast and poor people showed up to it and ate. You’re reading their reaction to the ruling as though it’s some kind of a priori attempt to flaunt the law. That’s just not a valid reading.

It’s very straight forward. They obviously had a worship breakfast and did not turn homeless people away, thus because they did not turn homeless people away, they lost their privilege to serve anyone at all.

Take a look at what I posted. My opinion was actually based on the language used by the Reverend Dottie Escobedo-Frank from the Crossroads website. It looks to me like they were purposely trying to feed the poor and the hungry. Maybe they were trying to circumvent zoning laws or maybe they weren’t, I don’t know. I acknowledge that I might be wrong but I don’t think it’s as clear and straight forward as you do.

Odesio

No, that’s how they responded to the charges. Read it again yourself. His point was that they were feeding EVERYONE, not feeding the poor. Poor people came to the service and yes they fed them on purpose. But the purpose was NOT to be a charitable dining hall.

It’s kind of amazing that you could read that entire post and come away with this view. His entire point was about how his congregation is being punished for feeding the wrong class of people.

I don’t know how they could make it any clearer. They defined it as a worship service. And yes, they fed poor people on purpose, but they also fed middle-class and wealthy people on purpose.

Why do you feel the need to blow off every other piece of information relevant? That there WAS a worship service, and that they fed EVERYONE who attended. Why is that all irrelevant to you?

  1. This has been reported.

  2. A church feeding the homeless – or a doper defending a church feeding the homeless – is liberal now?

Honestly, this sounds like behavior Billy Graham would welcome. Say what you want about Christians, but a whole lot of them feed a whole lot of poor people.

I actually thought it was kind of funny that he accused us of being sanctimonious liberals for defending a church. :wink: