Late last fall the Davis City Council had approved an MOU that both the neighbors and the Davis Community Church had agreed to for the provision of winter shelter services. The council had formed a subcommittee made up of Mayor Ruth Asmundson and Councilmember Sue Greenwald who evaluated the situation, gained an idea of the types of services provided, and the concerns of neighbors. Their ultimate recommendation that was passed by council December 1 by a 4-1 vote would cap services at the Davis Community Church to 25 people.
However, mother nature and a large organized contingent of community residents and church members would intervene. A severe cold snap in early December showed the 25 person cap to be problematic and when people were turned away a large section of the community became outraged and mobilized.
A number of Davis Community Church members came to the council meeting to support the removal of the service caps. Their arguments focused on issues of homeless and the need for the community to assist the homeless. There was also concern expressed by members that a municipal government entity not attempt to interfere with the operations of a faith based institution.
According to city documents, that would increase the limits at Davis Community Church to 64 persons, while St. James would be at 142 persons, and University Covenant Church at 122 persons.
However, the action was not without dissent. Councilmember Sue Greenwald asked that the council postpone its actions until one of the key stakeholders for the neighbors could be available. It became obvious as the meeting proceeded that the neighbors had not been included in the discussions. When asked about this, Mayor Asmundson who had taken over primary duties on the subcommittee as Councilmember Greenwald attended to her husband who had surgery, stated simply that they had been unable to agree on a schedule for meeting.
From a procedural standpoint this does not seem a reasonable excuse. Given that this is essentially a program that functions in December, is not clear the need to pass this in June, although Don Saylor argued that the time was needed for the facilities to make their arrangements. It would seem that the facilities could either make a contingency which would plan for expanded services in five months or make a reasonable assumption that the will of the council would be to expand the size of services.
Doree Ruud one of the neighbors was given extensive time to address council. She presented concerns about process, the exclusion of the neighbors in the MOU process, she argued that the zoning and the permit for DCC had only in recent years changed away from the conditional use permit, and she was concerned about the safety and the congregation of people in one location. She insisted this was not an issue about the homeless, rather it was a zoning and safety issue.
In a June 20th letter to council some of the neighbors expressed surprise to learn of the new MOU, that they had only found out about it through a ten day notice, and they do not believe the MOU revision was ever discussed with any member of the C/D street neighborhood group.
The council ultimately supported the change by a 4-0 vote with Councilmember Greenwald abstaining in deference to the neighborhood member who had wished to be in attendance but could not. However, there were a number of concerns that the council had.
Commentary
Ultimately, Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor modified his motion to have the council evaluate the program prior to June of 2011 and determine the impacts on the neighborhood based on concrete details rather than abstract theories. In the end, that is a reasonable approach, but the process again seems to leave something to be desired.
The Vanguard was never comfortable with the agreement reached between the parties that was passed on December 1, 2009. The neighbors in this case certainly have a legitimate concern that there not be an “over-concentration” of homeless services in their neighborhood. However, much of that can be resolved through the rotation of services provided by various churches and other facilities throughout the city. Moreover, while the concerns over-concentration may be reasonable, from a practical standpoint, the cold season in Davis is fairly brief. It is not as though these shelters are in place year round.
The idea of capping services to 25 people made some sense in theory, but when put into practice and Davis experience a deep freeze in early December, the functionality of it decrease significantly. The idea of a homeless shelter turning away any person needing refuge when space was available but their facilities were artificially capped rightly inspired outrage in the entire community.
I have significant concerns about the way in which the process went down. While it may ultimately be the case where the city and city council and the broader community disagrees with the neighbors and cannot find a common-grounds solutions, they should have at least been prioritized as part of the process. They should have sat at that table along with the community church and I have grave concerns that their rights were trampled over in this process.
DCC in part won in January because they had the loudest voice and the council sympathetic to the issue to begin with, changed their policy based on listening to the loudest voice. Again, I do not wish to disparage DCC or the hard work of a core group of dedicated activists. In fact, I agree with them in terms of the core issue, where I have reservations only stems from process.
So this program is going forward, the city should be proactive and work with the neighbors to make sure their concerns are heard and addressed should problems arise this winter.
With Mayor Asmundson leaving the council, the council has replaced her with Stephen Souza. Mr. Souza did press for an earlier evaluation period and it was his insistence that led the Mayor Pro Tem to alter his motion to allow for the council to evaluate the program earlier if needed. The neighbors need to be vigilant here.
This is a tough case because in the end I feel that the neighbors have legitimate concerns, but ultimately I feel that a church should be able to open its doors to the needy and provide shelter especially in times when it is cold and wet. Turning someone away is something that I hope we never have to experience again in this community.
However, by allowing the concerns of the neighbors to be overridden it is incumbent upon the church and all stakeholders to make sure that they are cognizant of and respondent to their concerns, particularly when it comes to issues of safety and quality of their neighborhoods.
The council did the right thing, however, hopefully in the future, the process can be improved.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“The idea of capping services to 25 people made some sense in theory, but when put into practice and Davis experience a deep freeze in early December, the functionality of it decrease significantly. The idea of a homeless shelter turning away any person needing refuge when space was available but their facilities were artificially capped rightly inspired outrage in the entire community.“
This is based on a lie. If you read the staff report about what happened that night, you will learn that the shelter turned people away without following the existing protocol to accept more people. Then, when the City asked them to take up to 10 more people each night, the shelter refused to unless the City provided staff and money. The City did so – taking money from Youth Services and provided a City employee to help staff the shelter over a number of days. The shelter advocates then used this incident to question the MOU. Advocates attended the next City Council meeting and further perpetrated this lie.
The City should have waited until the neighbors were back in town. I agree that the MOU process did not work here. The Church’s zoning should be changed so that it is equal to all the other Church’s in town to avoid repeated challenges to the MOU.
“Councilmember Greenwald abstaining in deference to the neighborhood member who had wished to be in attendance but could not”
One member? Who is this person? I think our city politicians might develop decision paralysis abstaining for single constituents… unless it be a big campagin contributor or a people’s republic tribal shaman.
Jeff: My understanding from watching and from Sue’s comments is that the person was the city-appointed neighborhood spokesman an d he is in boston on sabatical.
A tough call but I was very impressed with the doggedness of Dorie Rudd and feel Ruth’s explanation of not including the neighbors was weak at best. Sounded as though she was mainly interested in taking credit on her watch.
The rights of property owners trampled by the homeless, you’re kidding right?
“city-appointed neighborhood spokesman”
SODA: Thanks for the clarification… that makes more sense.
“The rights of property owners trampled by the homeless, you’re kidding right? “
I didn’t say that. I think the council and process trampled on their rights. But that had nothing to do with the homeless.
Unless I’m missing something (and that is entirely possible), my understanding was that the one time when people were turned away from the cold weather shelter on a very cold night was because for some reason no one was able to contact the city, for what reason it remains unclear. The city has a policy in place to suspend the 25 person limit in the case of an emergency. But the lines of communication broke down – which rests at the door of City Manager Bill Emlen. To me, the entire episode seemed like a tempest in a teapot. All that needs to be revised/corrected is the communication system, so that if someone in the city cannot be reached in an emergency, a second or third or fourth in command is available pronto to give the go ahead to increase the 25 person limit in an emergency.
However, people at the church, when they could not get a hold of city staff to get the go ahead in an emergency, could have made an “emergency decision” on their own, just using common sense. Instead they chose to exalt form over substance, and stuck to the technical letter of the law. I very much doubt had the church folks allowed a few more people into the shelter beyond the 25 person limit under emergency conditions, that anyone would have faulted them for it – especially the city, that would not have wanted to admit communications broke down on their watch.
Common sense could have prevailed here, but didn’t, and I expect for political reasons. This was a golden opportunity for the church to make a big political statement/Councilmember Don Saylor to garner political attention (he was the CC member who agendized this item for further discussion) for what should have been a non-issue. The 25 person limit is probably reasonable under normal conditions, so that not too many homeless congregate in one place. Many neighbors adjacent to shelters complain because of the homeless “camping out” (sleeping) on their porches or in their yards, which is a bit disconcerting, especially if you have children or a dog.
The neighbors have a legitimate concern, but because of political manuevering by both the church and some City Council members, the entire issue has become distorted and the neighbors villianized for what has been political gamemanship of the petty kind on the part of some on the City Council and the church itself and their ardent but naive supporters. Just my two cents worth from my observations of two City Council meetings on this subject…
I agree with you commonsense could have prevailed. But to me commonsense does not dictate a limit on the number of people, rather commonsense would be a commitment by the city and DCC to prevent the real concerns of the neighbors that actually have nothing to do with whether they house 25 or 40 people on a given night.
Hello,
It was good to see that the city voted to allow the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter to serve the homeless and limiting the provision of shelter to the fire code capacity of the individual hosting churches. I strongly believe that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) provides churches with the legal precedence to coordinate programs on their campuses in accordance with their religious mission. It has been established by the Circuit Courts that the provision of shelter and food is central to a churches mission. The presence of homeless people on a church’s steps does not meet the scrutiny for a public nuisance (293 F3d 570 Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church V. City of New York Docket number 02-7073). Any public nuisance from a church ministry program must be shown empirically in order to justify regulation of a church ministry or constitutional harms arise(Stuart Circle Parish V.bd of Zoning Appeals, 946 F. Supp. 1225, 1241 (e.d va 1996).
What brought this issue to the city council were complaints that the neighbors around and 5th and D Street raised about the hypothetical concerns of public nuisance that could arise due to concentration of homeless services at 5th and D Street. It can be said that the neighbors prior experience with homeless transients before the evolution of Interfaith Winter Shelter Programs at 5th and D Street played a role in generating some of the concerns with having more church programs at 5Th and D Street serving the homeless.
The Davis Police Department will tell you up front that the neighborhood is quieter because of the existence of these programs. The city had no justification in the first place in proposing to regulate the interfaith shelter. These are the true facts. If the city can show empirically that the Interfaith Winter Shelter is generating a bad impact on the neighborhood, the city can prevent the operation of any shelter or such program. The neighbors have the right to take their concerns to the council but the concerns have to be events that are occurring as a function of the programs that are already in operation, not programs that are proposed like the locker program.
It is good that the Interfaith programs will be evaluated in a year or so. It will provide peace and mind for the neighbors and the city. On the other hand though the church has always coordinated excellent programs. There is too much at stake to allow a program to be poorly coordinated.
It is a shame that more could not be done to assist the homeless of Davis. The homeless problem is not that big in our community in relation to the wealth that our community possesses. So much could be done if there was a political will on the part of every citizen in our community to make sure that the homeless could be given an opportunity to get on their feet. This life is tough already even for people who have a job and a place to sleep. Imagine what our homeless go through. Is it right for our war vets suffering from PTSD to come back to the states with no shelter and inadequate medical resources (I use this as one example)?
Perhaps there should have been a greater effort to include the neighbors in the discussions of the revised (MOU). My belief is that they would have not provided proof that the Interfaith programs were posing a harmful safety danger for the neighborhood. They would have stated what has already been stated “there is a hypothetical concern with centralization of services at 5th and D Street”.
We need to think beyond hypothetical concerns and develop programs that will get our homeless the help that they need. Every citizen has a duty to assist others in need as every citizen has a duty to vote.
“Perhaps there should have been a greater effort to include the neighbors in the discussions of the revised (MOU).”
No “effort” was needed to get their participation. The neighbors requested participation and were refused. It is my belief that this did not happen, because the shelter would have to come clean about their refusal to take more people unless the City paid money and provided staff, and then used the incident to create an unnecessary fuss at the City Council and in the local media over the MOU.
The money taken from Youth Services should be returned to that program.
Remember, the MOU was between the CHURCH and the NEIGHBORHOOD, not the Shelter and the neighborhood, the shelter is not the Church. The Shelter should have taken up their problems with the restrictions on their use of the Church with the Church. Instead, it lied and cheated its way toward forcing the change in the MOU at the City Council level, without the participants of the original MOU.
I don’t think anyone will fully trust the MOU process ever again.