Note: although housing advocates often use the term “unhoused” to describe people without housing, those people themselves often self-identify as—and prefer the term—homeless. I use both terms in this article.
The organization Food Not Bombs has long been known for feeding unhoused people in the U.S. and beyond. The city of Houston recently began issuing tickets to Food Not Bombs volunteers for giving out meals outside of the central library, but last week, a jury found the first ticketed volunteer, Phillip Picone, not guilty of violating the city’s ordinance against giving food to those in need.
The ordinance, which bans handing out food to more than five people in need without permission from the owner of the property on which the feeding takes place, went unenforced for years while Food Not Bombs held its events. The jury decided that since the city had previously given permission to Food Not Bombs to feed people at the library, there was reasonable doubt as to whether Picone’s citation was justified.
However, the case makes it clear that the underlying issue in these citations isn’t with how permission is granted, but in how people with housing view people without it. During the trial, Picone’s lawyer, Paul Kubosh, used slices of pie to illustrate that volunteers only need permission to feed people when the people being fed are homeless or in poverty. After the verdict, Kubosh issued the following statement:
The line of people there just shows that the need exists, and the city doesn’t seem to really care about addressing that need; it seems that what they care about doing is pushing [homeless people] out of sight. Addressing the issue that way and we just don’t feel that that’s the way to do it.
The city reportedly began fining Food Not Bombs because it wanted to route homeless residents to its own feeding site—at the police station.
Picone was the first of 45 volunteers to be issued a citation. The other 44 cases are still pending.
Feeding unhoused neighbors doesn’t create homelessness
Houston city attorney Arturo Micnele said that in issuing fines, the city was responding to complaints about “the congregation of the homeless around the library, even during off hours.”
It’s telling that Micnele describes the existence of homeless people in a particular place as a problem. Even if Food Not Bombs wasn’t giving out meals by the library, unhoused people use the library for many reasons: shelter from bad weather, electrical outlets, internet access, reading materials, entertainment, and more. In short, they use the library for many of the same reasons housed residents use it.
I should know: I was a librarian for 10 years, and I staffed events at which the library gave out meals to people living on the streets. Even if we shut down our feeding events, people without housing would still flock to the library, and they have every right to do so.
Plus, homeless people have been burned by city-sanctioned services plenty of times, which makes a meal site at a police station far from ideal. Police and other city agencies far too often terrorize homeless communities instead of helping them. For example, here in Los Angeles in 2021, police raided and evicted over 200 homeless people from their encampment around Echo Park Lake, forcing them out of their makeshift homes and throwing their belongings in the trash. A year later, the housing those residents were promised never materialized.
It’s true that Houston’s response to homelessness has been better than L.A.’s. The city has reportedly secured housing for 25,000 people in the past ten years. But hunger and homelessness are still ongoing problems, and punishing organizations like Food Not Bombs isn’t going to alleviate that. I’m glad that the jury in Picone’s case were able to see their homeless neighbors as human beings, because recognizing the humanity of our neighbors is the only path forward.
(via Houston Public Media, featured image: Ekkasit Jokthong, Getty Images)
