Cruel and Inhuman

[Rusty5329]

The AP is reporting that a community in Pheonix is asking their Church to stop feeding the homeless. I shit you not...

continued at http://sumofchange.blogspot.com/2010/03/cruel-and-inhuman.html

[MicaelS]

1. Disgusting.....

And I bet most of these people who are objecting consider themselves "Christian." :banghead: :puke:

[sui generis]

2. Well . . . .

So if I live in a decent neighborhood and there is a church a block away that "feeds the homeless" and all of a sudden there are people wandering and waiting around for food from that location, I would honestly be unhappy too.

That's not to say "starve the homeless" it's not the same thing. I drove my ex-partner around for ten years (he was an MSSW for MHMR in Dallas) to every last homeless shelter and halfway house in Dallas and I can tell you that it is NOT appropriate to re-purpose residential areas for shelters, and that's reality.

If that church wants to help, there are better ways of helping to feed the homeless than to bring them to everyone else's doorstep on the way to theirs.

I think this article has some spin on it that isn't altogether honest.

[Rusty5329]

5. Does the church not have the right to bring people...

to their Church? Whether it be to give out food or hear a sermon, do they not have some right to open their doors to folks?

[SoCalNative]

6. Not in my neighborhood they don't

[sui generis]

7. depends if they drive or wait for the church to open for 12 hours.

and then hang around after the church locks up for the night.

rights? kidding right? why should a church have more "rights" than a homeowner. It's not about being mean or NIMBY, it's about the right services in the right place. My observations from soup kitchens is that a line forms outside and stays outside. If public transportation doesn't service the facility directly, you have people wandering the streets, and waiting in the streets for the facility to open, and in the streets when the facilities close.

Is that appropriate for every neighborhood?

[northofdenali]

3. Wow. Just wow.

If I could afford to do so, I think I'd move away from the U.S.

Nah. I wouldn't. I'm a '60s liberal Democrat too pissed off to move now.

[leftstreet]

4. Why does such a 'nice' neighborhood have so many homeless people?

:shrug:

[Echo In Light]

8. Family Value$, Inc

[agent46]

9. They say

They say you should never feed feral cats because if you do they'll just live long enough to breed and increase the cat problem. Hard not to see a pattern here.

[sui generis]

12. let's see I've actually done catch & spay 13 times in my neighborhood

but just try doing that with a homeless person.

:silly:

Seriously, why do churches get special dispensation when if I decided to open a soup kitchen in my home there are a lot fewer people who would agree to have me as a neighbor.

It's bullshit and this church is being dishonest, even with the best apparent intentions.

There are real, civic shelters. Go work with them. They use real counselors, job assistance, social work and community services and they are much more likely to both feed AND provide life assistance than some holier than thou church pretending to be outraged that not everyone agrees with their methods of outreach.

It's not about lacking compassion, it's about doing the right thing to make a difference.

[Demoiselle]

10. I live in a "nice" neighborhood. Sort of.

People around here have tried to use zoning laws to
1. Shut down a daycare center in a local church. ( Driveway access issue, absolutely bogus... no legal basis for a suit.)

2. Prevent the same church from lending its building on Saturdays to a Jewish congregation that had lost its temple to a fire. (Same bogus driveway issue as above.)

3. Prevent a small (5 kids max) special needs foster family that followed every foster family rule on the books from moving into a house in the neighborhood because they insisted the fact that the foster children needed respirators at night actually turned the private home into a "hospital," and that broke the residential zoning code. This was bullshit, too, which the neighborhood would have learned if they'd won the case. The Feds would have been down their throats immediately for discriminating against those disabled kids. In fact, some of those who opposed the foster family's residence admitted that they were worried that the parents of the special needs kids (mostly African American from very poor neighborhoods and not medically sophisticated enough to handle the very demanding regimen of care their children temporarily needed) would actually come into the neighborhood to visit their kids.
the great thing was that the kids got both the warmth of a family setting and the best technical care...and they usually didn't have to stay more than a year in foster care to get well enough to go home. If the neighborhood objectors had had their way, the children would have had to spend that year in a cold hospital ward.

There's more. But I'm saddened and tired of recounting these stories.

And, yeah, there are times when my neighborhood ain't nice.

[earth mom]

11. What would Jesus do?

Not this! :puke: