I was reading a friend’s Facebook post early Monday in which she mentioned it was “illegal” to feed the homeless in North Carolina.
That struck me as preposterous, so I did a little digging to see if that was indeed true and, if so, what was the intent behind such a decree.
What I found was that Love Wins Ministries, which had been setting up on the periphery of a park in Raleigh, N.C., on weekends and feeding the homeless for the past six years, had been told by police on Aug. 24 that a local ordinance banned the distribution of food in city parks without a permit.
According to the Raleigh News & Observer, the city’s mayor, Nancy McFarlane, and a city council member quickly responded and said a council committee would look into the issue and that they had not been part of the decision to begin enforcing the law.
The story noted that while there were organizations in the city that feed the homeless during the week, there was no such assistance available on weekends. Love Wins Ministries founder Hugh Hollowell told the News & Observer that an officer approached the group as they were handing out breakfast biscuits, saying they needed a permit, which cost $800 per day. That would add up to $1,600 a weekend for the ministry, which serves food on Saturdays and Sundays.
Hollowell posted a blog about the incident, which went viral. The next day, a statement from Raleigh police noted there had been no arrests and that “work is ongoing with those involved, some of whom are developing alternative sites” for food distribution.
Later in the day, McFarlane’s office released her statement.
No matter the reason for the ordinance – liability concerns, litter, crowd control– there must have been a better way of getting a handle on the situation.
In the course of my research, however, it became clear that Raleigh was not the only city struggling to address the issue of feeding the homeless.
According to Activist Post, more than 50 cities across the country have laws that limit meal sharing.
- In Orlando, Florida, a court recently upheld a 2006 ordinance that limits food sharing with groups of more than 25 people. Any group conducting a large event in parks within two miles of City Hall must obtain a permit. An organization is limited to two permits per park per year.
- In New York City, food donations to homeless shelters are no longer allowed because the city cannot determine the salt, fat and fiber content of donated food.
According to a 2012 report by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Oklahoma City were among those cities that adopted similar bans. The Center won a lawsuit in March that prevented the city of Dallas from barring religious organizations from donating food to the homeless.
Some cities have restrictions on the number of times per day that churches, homeless shelters and other organizations can offer meals. So, for example, a church may offer breakfast, but not lunch or dinner.
The center published a report in 2007 and again in 2010 that looked at laws designed to limit food sharing and has conducted other studies about the criminalization of the homeless through ordinances that keep them on the move.
There is no doubt that cities are wrestling with quality of life issues for all its residents. It can be unsettling to walk by a crowd of homeless people, strangers who may or may not be harmless to passersby. To be sure, lots of people can tell colorful, and sometimes scary, stories about encounters with panhandlers.
Cities rely on attracting the gainfully employed whose taxes help them maintain parks and other amenities. Seeing large numbers of homeless on the streets can shake visitors and residents’ confidence. Many of us help the impoverished through donations to our churches and favorite charities, but unless we volunteer with an organization or visit a soup kitchen, we often don’t come in contact with those in such desperate need of charity, and cities depend on that to keep us from being scared away.
And yet there is something disturbing about the idea that a city would stop private and nonprofit organizations from helping those who cannot or do not, for a whole host of reasons, help themselves. It is hard to imagine a chronically hungry person being able to sit down and logically plot out a path to getting back on his feet.
There is nothing starker for homeless individuals and families than not knowing where that next meal is coming from. Being able to get at least one good meal a day is the difference for many people between hanging in there and totally giving up. A conversation over a meal with someone who has connections to a shelter, a clean bed, a shower or transitional housing is a good start for getting someone’s attention, even if it’s no more than a casual chat over a sausage biscuit.
A coordinated effort between the network of municipal services and those provided by charitable organizations may be in order. Surely, there are cities that are models of best practices that other jurisdictions can follow. Perhaps it is time for cities to encourage the homeless to pull up to a menu of coordinated services, rather than push away from the aid table.
Jackie Jones, a journalist and journalism educator, is director of the career transformation firm Jones Coaching LLC and author of “Taking Care of the Business of You: 7 Days to Getting Your Career on Track.”
