'Churches on the Streets' Religious Group Ordered To Stop Feeding Homeless

[rug]

Posted: 12/13/2013 2:39 pm EST | Updated: 12/13/2013 5:15 pm EST
The Huffington Post | By Eleanor Goldberg

A St. Louis religious group of volunteers that serves hot home-cooked meals to the homeless was ordered to cease its operations until it gets a permit.

For the past year, Churches of the Streets, a community-based organization of Christian volunteers, has been serving dozens of homeless people every Monday night who have nowhere else to go, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. But after the paper ran a feature lauding the group for its benevolent work earlier this month, the city’s Health Department told the group that it had to stop feeding the homeless until it gets proper documentation.

“They’re doing a good thing, they really are,” Pat Mahoney, an environmental health supervisor with the city Health Department, told the Post-Dispatch. “It’s because they’re serving the public. The moment you start inviting the public to attend, that’s when we get into it.”

The group thought it was in the clear since it serves its clients on private property. Additionally, residents are allowed to hold barbecues and tailgate out in the open, so Churches of the Streets assumed that feeding people in need would fall under the same category.

?6

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/13/churches-of-the-streets_n_4440415.html

https://www.facebook.com/ChurchesOnTheStreets

[cbayer]

1. Stupid bureaucrats.

Getting paid with tax dollars that would be better off spent feeding these people.

Hey, Merry Christmas homeless people!! Not you get to be both cold and hungry!

[Wilms]

2. So much for the "Thousand Points of Life"...

...and stuff.

[sigmasix]

3. It does no good to ignore the law when attempting to do good.

Poor people deserve safe food too

[rug]

4. That they do.

Paramount though is getting the food. It seems the law has let them down in that regard.

[cbayer]

7. I wouldn't object to the organizations having to pass muster

in terms of food preparation, etc.

It's the outrageous fees and shutting them done while they do whatever they have to do to get the license.

These are people that are likely to pick food out of dumpsters. I think a little flexibility is called for here.

[pinto]

5. BS. They're using the public health / food safety ploy. I've seen it done in my area.

It's actually about the homeless being in the downtown region, imo. Don't feed them, they'll move on.

"They were bringing the food in their cars and setting it up outside. There's a lot of potential there for food to go bad..." said the Health Director.

After dark, brought hot and held hot. Here's an on-site photo -



Food pots look pretty hot to me and notice that the servers are wearing gloves.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. I've seen it, too...

an excuse to hide the homeless-- they make the place look bad.

The really horrible thing is that not all of these people doing it realize they are doing it.

[cbayer]

8. Totally agree. They did this in Santa Monica as well, IIRC.

They also put in some laws about overnight parking that kept the people who were living in campers and RV's from being able to sleep there.

So they moved to the beach and the sidewalks.

Disgraceful.