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HOME VAN NEWSLETTER 8/16/09
A LEGAL REBELLION AGAINST HUNGER
The 130-person lunch limit at St. Francis House is on ongoing disaster. It is important to note that many of those turned away aren't getting breakfast either. The City Commission continues to suggest that churches, who are allowed to feed up to 20 people without getting a special use permit, take up the slack on this, but it isn't happening. It would take a lot to make this suggestion work. Most homeless people don't have transportation to go to churches outside the immediate downtown area. Many church people work, and aren't available to cook and serve a lunch. Who would coordinate groups of 20 people being bussed around town to various churches?
Here is what church groups, civic groups, and even individuals can do: pack bag lunches (which can be done the evening before) and take them to the perimeter of St. Francis House and give them to people who are being turned away.
This solution is entirely legal. It is not illegal to share food with other people in a public area, such as the park across the street from St. Francis House, or even on a public sidewalk as long as one is not blocking pedestrian traffic.
It would also be good for more housed people to get to know homeless people, on a personal, individual level. The ongoing criminalization of homelessness has given many good and worthy people the false belief that homeless people are dangerous. I have lived within walking distance of two homeless shelters and numerous camping areas for 25 years, in the Southeast Historic District, which is one of the lowest crime rate neighborhoods in Gainesville. Nevertheless, NIMBY hysteria has resulted in the selection of a One Stop Center site so far out in the boondocks, it is likely to turn into a kind of cross between an internment camp and a leper colony. Homeless people are afraid of being forced into such a place. They are human beings with lives. Like all the rest of us, they go to the library, attend concerts in the park, visit friends, have appointments with doctors, employers etc. etc. Unless there is absolutely fantastic bus service to this One Stop Center, all day every day, they are going to have greatly diminished and restricted lives, on the distant day this Center actually opens.
In the meantime, the Tent City refugees are literally being chased in circles from one wooded area to another. When homeless people are spotted in the woods near a neighborhood, GPD gets a call, "We want these people evicted."
People who were doing relatively well in their lives, before all this happened, are crumbling - one Home Van volunteer found a young couple sitting with what little they had left after being evicted four times in one month, drinking and crying, at ten o'clock in the morning.
Can any of us be sure we would do any better, in their circumstances?
Right now, we the people - the ordinary citizens of Gainesville - are all the homeless people have. If we don't step up to the plate and start batting, our homeless brothers and sisters will continue to suffer as their lives disintegrate.
Spread the word to all the local lists you belong to! Let's start feeding people and getting to know them as our brothers and sisters in the human family.
love, arupa
______________________________________________________________________________
The Home Van needs creamy peanut butter, jelly, Vienna sausages, candles, bugspray, tents and tarps. Call 352-372-4825 to arrange for dropoffs. Financial donations to the Home Van should be made out to St. Vincent de Paul, earmarked for the Home Van, and mailed to 307 SE 6th Street, Gainesville, Florida 32601. All donations are tax deductible.
The 130-person lunch limit at St. Francis House is on ongoing disaster. It is important to note that many of those turned away aren't getting breakfast either. The City Commission continues to suggest that churches, who are allowed to feed up to 20 people without getting a special use permit, take up the slack on this, but it isn't happening. It would take a lot to make this suggestion work. Most homeless people don't have transportation to go to churches outside the immediate downtown area. Many church people work, and aren't available to cook and serve a lunch. Who would coordinate groups of 20 people being bussed around town to various churches?
Here is what church groups, civic groups, and even individuals can do: pack bag lunches (which can be done the evening before) and take them to the perimeter of St. Francis House and give them to people who are being turned away.
This solution is entirely legal. It is not illegal to share food with other people in a public area, such as the park across the street from St. Francis House, or even on a public sidewalk as long as one is not blocking pedestrian traffic.
It would also be good for more housed people to get to know homeless people, on a personal, individual level. The ongoing criminalization of homelessness has given many good and worthy people the false belief that homeless people are dangerous. I have lived within walking distance of two homeless shelters and numerous camping areas for 25 years, in the Southeast Historic District, which is one of the lowest crime rate neighborhoods in Gainesville. Nevertheless, NIMBY hysteria has resulted in the selection of a One Stop Center site so far out in the boondocks, it is likely to turn into a kind of cross between an internment camp and a leper colony. Homeless people are afraid of being forced into such a place. They are human beings with lives. Like all the rest of us, they go to the library, attend concerts in the park, visit friends, have appointments with doctors, employers etc. etc. Unless there is absolutely fantastic bus service to this One Stop Center, all day every day, they are going to have greatly diminished and restricted lives, on the distant day this Center actually opens.
In the meantime, the Tent City refugees are literally being chased in circles from one wooded area to another. When homeless people are spotted in the woods near a neighborhood, GPD gets a call, "We want these people evicted."
People who were doing relatively well in their lives, before all this happened, are crumbling - one Home Van volunteer found a young couple sitting with what little they had left after being evicted four times in one month, drinking and crying, at ten o'clock in the morning.
Can any of us be sure we would do any better, in their circumstances?
Right now, we the people - the ordinary citizens of Gainesville - are all the homeless people have. If we don't step up to the plate and start batting, our homeless brothers and sisters will continue to suffer as their lives disintegrate.
Spread the word to all the local lists you belong to! Let's start feeding people and getting to know them as our brothers and sisters in the human family.
love, arupa
______________________________________________________________________________
The Home Van needs creamy peanut butter, jelly, Vienna sausages, candles, bugspray, tents and tarps. Call 352-372-4825 to arrange for dropoffs. Financial donations to the Home Van should be made out to St. Vincent de Paul, earmarked for the Home Van, and mailed to 307 SE 6th Street, Gainesville, Florida 32601. All donations are tax deductible.
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