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City, homeless advocates begin meeting on outdoor feeding
One bold idea: an indoor-outdoor homeless café, right on the Parkway near the Free Library and Family Court buildings, with all the class of the stylish new Milk & Honey café just down the road.
City, homeless advocates begin meeting on outdoor feeding
In September, federal District Court Judge William Yohn Jr. approved an agreement between the city and church groups that had sued over a ban on serving meals outdoors to the homeless and hungry, providing for the two sides to begin meeting to work together on a solution.
This week, the groups finally sat down for the first time.
The goal, theoretically, was the same on all sides: To eliminate the need for outdoor meals. But ever since the ban was issued by the Nutter administration this spring, citing a need for both sanitary facilities and dignity, critics have suggested there's an ulterior motive: a desire to clear the homeless, and the church groups who’ve long brought them food there, off the newly gussied-up Ben Franklin Parkway.
So, city representatives’ reaction to the latest bold idea presented to them by homeless-feeding groups — an indoor-outdoor homeless café, right on the Parkway near the Free Library and Family Court buildings, with all the class of the stylish new Milk & Honey café just down the road — was not surprising.
“There was kind of a silence,” laughs Pastor Brian Jenkins of Chosen 300 Ministries. He said that he thought the administration might think over the idea, however; he didn't take the silence as a "no," per se.
Cranford Joseph Coulter of The King’s Jubilee says the meeting was “very disappointing.”
“The mayor told us his goal was to end homelessness,” Coulter says. Yet, the city was “talking about soup kitchens, and I was talking about overhauling the system.”
Nutter spokesman Mark McDonald says the meeting “was productive. The goal is to improve the lines of communication” and to create a coordinating body on fighting hunger. He noted that the administration had named a point-person to deal with antihunger efforts, though as the Inquirer reported last year, not everyone was satisfied with the appointment. He said those interested in understanding the city's vision for this could look to the August task force report "Moving Philadelphia Forward: A path towards strengthening food access in our community."
The report calls for improved access to food, hygienic facilities and support services; better coordination and leadership from the city including a full-time dedicated city coordinator; and — much like Coulter and Jenkins want — the establishment of a "new" space that offers healthy food in both indoor and outdoor environments. (Outdoor options are important because not all homeless people are willing to go indoors for meals. Jenkins says some people who aren't homeless but don't feel comfortable in a shelter also avail themselves of outdoor meals.)
That the city is, according to McDonald, going in the direction suggested by the task force report, may mean that the church groups and the administration are closer to agreement than it may seem.
But Chosen 300, for one, could use more immediate help. Jenkins says the only city assistance it’s ever gotten was $75,000 in seed money, under Mayor John Street, to build its highly utilized Spring Garden Street facility. Jenkins’ work to open up yet another dining hall, in West Philadelphia — as reported in detail in the Inquirer — has ground nearly to a halt for want of $160,000 to buy needed mechanical systems. Volunteers are showing up every couple weeks, but the question ultimately is "whether this facility opens in six months or three years." He points out that opening this facility could be important, since today many hungry people travel regularly from West Philly, where they live, to Center City to get meals.
Meanwhile, corporate and employee-designated donations have dropped off by $150,000 from last year, while demand for meals has soared, sending Jenkins and affiliated church groups scrambling. Jenkins says Chosen 300 is $26,000 in the hole for this year
Jenkins is confident that “we can come up with solutions, but they cost money. And there has to be some involvement by the city. The nonprofit sector cannot carry the entire load.”
To that end, though, no follow-up meeting date was set, Coulter says. “They’ll call us, I guess.”
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