For more than 10 years, East Cesar Chavez-area community leaders have tried to shut down a soup kitchen that has drawn a growing number of free-lunch seekers — as well as day labor-seekers, mentally ill people, and criminals — into their neighborhood. On Tuesday evening, several dozen concerned residents gathered at Sanchez Elementary School to ask APD representatives and Council Members Daryl Slusher and Raul Alvarez for help in removing the kitchen, operated by the Austin Baptist Chapel (whose members declined to attend the meeting).
According to community activist and homeless advocate Lori C-Renteria, during the mid-Eighties the kitchen, located at 908 E. Cesar Chavez, was named Angels House and served meals only on weekends. She and others eventually convinced the operator to close shop. “We decided together it wasn’t dignified for the homeless people to have to wander around all day long,” she said. “He agreed the Salvation Army, with its megamillions, should be feeding the homeless on weekends.”
When the Chapel bought the property, however, it reopened the kitchen and began offering meals daily. Citing its incompatible use, lack of integration with the city’s homeless social services system, and draw among single men with substance abuse problems, neighbors complained again. But the kitchen refuses to pack up its pots and go.
“[ABC] has no rules, so we’re the ones hosting what is probably the most dangerous segment of the homeless population,” lamented Renteria, who urged the city to close the shelter as a nuisance based on existing legal precedents. One of the APD officers said that such a ruling requires prostitution, narcotics, or alcohol on the premises. “You could find all of that,” said Bruce Hughes, who lives behind the kitchen.
Slusher agreed the kitchen was incompatible with the neighborhood, but pointed to the APD’s efforts to step up enforcement as an interim measure. Alvarez said putting the kitchen elsewhere — say, at the Salvation Army — would enable the chapel to carry on with its mission while relieving East Cesar Chavez residents. Given the Chapel’s penchant for stubbornness, Alvarez — a former member of the East Cesar Chavez Neighborhood Planning Team — was reluctant to make promises. “What if they say no?”
This article appears in December 7 • 2001.