How Wonky Homelessness Consultants Helped Ban Food-Sharing in 22 Cities

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-wonky-homelessness-consultants-helped-ban-food-sharing-22-cities



In May, a Florida couple made national headlines when they were fined hundreds of dollars and threatened with prison for feeding homeless people. For over a year, Chico and Debbie Jimenez, had been feeding more than 100 homeless people every Wednesday at Manatee Island Park in Daytona Beach.

The police officers who ticketed the couple cited a local law in which a permit is required to share food with homeless people on public property. Daytona Beach authorities have since dropped all charges and fines, but the couple said they would face jail time if they hosted the gathering again without a permit.

“The worst thing is, these are people we have grown to love, they've become like family to us, and now we’re not allowed to go down and do that anymore,” Debbie Jimenez told NBC. “It's just heartbreaking. I have cried and cried and cried.”

The Jimenez’s story is not unique. Food-sharing with the homeless has been criminalized across the country and is spreading. In its recent report, the National Coalition for the Homeless found that since January 2013 alone, food-sharing laws have been adopted in 21 cities. This past Tuesday, Fort Lauderdale, FL, passed the latest of these restrictions, making it city number 22. About 10 other cities are in the process of placing restrictions on food-sharing. This is a 47 percent increase since the coalition’s last report in 2010.

[nilesobek]

1. The true purpose

of creating laws against food sharing is to keep people from gathering. Get them back in the restaurants and superstores and stop having camaraderie and empathy with the less fortunate. This will become standard practice across the country just like the way they closed up public lands from the homeless too. No where to go and nothing to eat!

[LiberalLoner]

2. +1

[appal_jack]

3. And therefore, these bad laws should be fought on 1st Amendment grounds.

If 'money is speech' according to the Supreme(ly Corrupt) Court, then I fail to see how a gathering of hungry being fed is not a powerful 'petition... for redress of (the) grievance' of homelessness.

k&r,

-app