Ordinance Requiring Permit To Feed Homeless Still Angers Volunteers (Houston)
The temperature dropped to the mid-50s, the wind picked up, and suddenly Felicia Garcia's outdoor nap wasn't so comfy.
She awoke Tuesday to the rain coming down on the thin nylon walls of her tent, zipping up the entryway to keep dry as her boyfriend, Jerry Landry, hurried inside. Several backpacks were tucked neatly along the perimeter of the small room, and fuzzy blankets were their only cushion from the plywood foundation beneath them. “We're just trying to make it,” Garcia said, competing over the rain.
Every night, Garcia and Landry rely on 1000 Hills Ministry for dinner, underneath a bridge on St. Charles Street—a luxury that Garcia and Landry say has become less and less available over the past couple years.
Volunteers used to bring them Popeyes' chicken—two pieces for 99 cents—near a church on Fannin Street every Tuesday night. No more. Sometimes they went downtown to the Preston Street Bridge for meals. No more. And when Garcia was on her own in 2013, she used to go to a Third Ward bridge—but that ended, too, after police told volunteers one night that, sorry, you need a permit for this.
Such are the likely results of the Houston Charitable Feeding Ordinance, passed by City Council in 2012, which requires anyone wanting to feed more than five homeless people to get a permit from the city, to receive food-safety training, and to get written consent from private property owners before serving. Giving a couple boxes of leftovers to a family of homeless people downtown, without first doing all of the above, now may come with a fine of up to $500, which Mayor Annise Parker graciously lowered from $2,000 in the final draft of the ordinance.
http://www.houstonpress.com/news/ordinance-requiring-permit-to-feed-homeless-still-angers-volunteers-7937476
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