Cases against volunteers with Food Not Bombs were dismissed on Thursday, but the city attorney said he intends to press the issue.
Are they blocking an entrance or something? You’d think the city would set up a location for them to do their thing if it’s such a “nuisance”.
If I’m not mistaken, they made it illegal to feed the homeless without jumping through a bunch of stupid hoops. Ah, here it is.
Those regulations don’t sound egregious to me:
- if you’re going to feed more than five people at a time, ask for a permit and attend our seminar so we can advise you how to do it safely and meet health code
- if you’re going to do it on public property, do it at the site we’ve set up for this purpose
- if you’re going to do it on private property, go for it after you get permission from the property owner
Instead, the people who got in trouble set up a food truck at a public library.
if you’re going to do it on public property, do it at the site we’ve set up for this purpose
From what I’ve seen when this was first posted on Lemmy, “the site we’ve set up for this purpose” was the former police headquarters. A lot of people, especially not rich people living unhoused, might not want to go onto police property, especially in a city like Houston.
That’s an excellent point. It does surprise me that there’s only one designated public location. Houston is a huge place. You’d think there would be one in each district at very least.
…the point of the law is to stop people feeding the homeless. In their fucked up minds, if they make the city inhospitable to the people without money or resources, they’ll leave. Ignoring the fact that they don’t have the resources to do that. So it’s basically a “if you’re homeless, die quickly” law.
Yeah but you do realize that no one will ever be able to successfully navigate those hoops
Seminar sounds like the city can make it difficult by not offering it or charging some ridiculous price. Other than that, finding a business to let you use their parking lot once a week doesn’t sound that difficult. People do it all the time.
The city has had an ordinance restricting how volunteers can feed people since 2012, but it’s gone largely unenforced until recently, The Houston’s Chronicle’s R.A. Schuetz wrote. The rule stipulates that a person must obtain permission from a property owner before providing food to groups larger than five.
What about double-jeopardy?
I’ll take ‘Ways to kill homeless people’ for 600, Alex.
I mean, I don’t take issue with the concept of making sure food served is actually safe. But the US Constitution says you can’t be prosecuted twice for the same crime. Not being a lawyer, I don’t know where the boundary exists for that though. The original filing was dismissed, so maybe it has to actually go to trial in order for the protection to kick in at a second attempt to prosecute.
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