Churches in Western Washington, in towns like Olympia and Tumwater, have been taking turns hosting a homeless camp called Camp Quixote over the last year or so. Basically, the homeless are housed in church parking lots in an organized fashion, with access to the church buildings at times for rest rooms, kitchen and washing facilities. After a few months, they move on to the next location. It’s a great way for churches to cooperate with each other – there’s an Episcopal church, a Unitarian Universalist community, and other denominations.

But the nearby town of Lacey, WA decided that they would not allow churches in their town to participate or start a similar program; rather than ban it outright, they passed a ludicrously complicated, impractical, and expensive ordinance that basically makes it impossible for ANY group to run any kind of homeless shelter in Lacey at all.

They think they can ban the poor, apparently. Nice.

Message clear: Lacey doesnt want homeless – Opinion – The Olympian – Olympia, Washington

The council imposed 16 pages of limitations on every host church. Each host congregation, for example, must have $1 million worth of general liability insurance and pay for a conditional use permit to house the homeless. Each church must have a kitchen and the entrance must be manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Host churches must log every visitor and track every single homeless individual’s circumstance. Shelter residents must present identification or be fingerprinted. How many homeless individuals have a driver’s license for identification purposes?

By erecting those hurdles, the council majority has, in practical terms, made it impossible for churches to meet their biblical call to shelter the homeless. It’s a shameful — and perhaps unconstitutional — infringement on the rights of religious congregations.

While reading the restrictions, I was mentally recasting them in terms of Holy Moly/St Nicholas. It’s pretty sobering, because our biggest issue is lack of program space. We’d be prevented from offering hospitality by this ordinance – I doubt any church would be able to beat it.

We couldn’t afford the insurance, we don’t have a certifiable kitchen, we couldn’t pay for the conditional use permit unless it was a few hundred dollars, we wouldn’t be able to man an entrance 24/7, let alone staff it during the day or keep the records. We’re in a suburban neighborhood, so homelessness is invisible in our area – there may be dozens of people camping rough in the forest preserve a mile away, and there are homeless shelters, but the homeless are never seen during the day except at a nearby interchange where they stand with cardboard signs. We do what we can in a small way to support other churches’ weekly shelters – I’ve got another laundry run to do this week.

We were talking to the diocese about an addition, but it all got very political and the design and construction planning just got totally bogged down. So now we’re taking back the old rectory house off the back of the church parking lot – which means that the renters have to be evicted – just to get the space we need.

And the issue of the renters is a long-standing problem, because they’ve been behind in their rent for years . Every now and then, they promise to catch up, but mostly they don’t pay rent at all, or now and then they pay a few hundred dollars. So it puts us in the position of either offering charity willingly (except that the relationship is very difficult and unsatisfying) or reluctantly coming to the decision to dislodge someone in order to get the use of our property. Eventually this summer, the house will become program, storage, and food pantry space, until such time as the diocese gets around to helping us design and build the addition. It’s possible that someone may still end up living in the house in a caretaker capacity, but we would set up much more careful guidelines, and it would be someone that’s connected to us in some way that needs help. Basically, we’ve been giving housing away to people that could afford to live somewhere else, but were happy to take advantage of us.

It’s troubling. But that’s how it is. They’ve been avoiding us for years – on Sundays, they’re never around, and they don’t return phone calls. It took several months just to catch up with them and speak face to face to let them know our plans, rather than leave a notice on the door. I hope they find a nice new place… and I hope they can get their act together.

Via Episcope