This is an opinion column.
Krista Manchester and Emily Rhodes had a vision.
They wanted to feed people who are hungry, to use food to bridge gaps and build community. They wanted to provide nutrition for the mind and the body in a way that was not judgmental, or preachy, or demanding.
They wanted people to feed people without the trappings of church or a dime from government. They found thousands of people of good will who were willing to help. So the two Florence women – as different as midnight and dawn – began to do it.
It started last summer in a Florence church, a six month arrangement until they could find their own place. They found civic groups and student groups and church groups to prepare food every day for any who wanted to eat.
People were changed by those meals. And not just those who came because their stomachs growled.
Manchester was adamant about a few rules. If you serve food you can’t hang around in the back. If you serve, you eat around the tables. You meet, and talk, and see each other.
People began to come, and to see. For six months the program – Room at the Table – fed about 130 people a night. Some were homeless -- the group says 11 percent. Some were old, and struggled to prepare their own food. Some were disabled. Some were lonely. Some came to help, because they didn’t want to say out loud that they came for food. In that six months 1,200 volunteers from 90 groups had fed their neighbors.
It was one of those moments when good people could feel pride in themselves and their town.
And then it all went to hell.
By Thanksgiving Room at the Table found a building of its own, an old event center in a neighborhood called Seven Points. They never got to open it.
Some neighbors complained, because feeding the hungry always seems more palatable in somebody else’s dining room. Some talked about the wrong element.
A city zoning official, Gary Williamson, ruled that even though Room at the Table leased an old event center, it could not be used under current zoning to feed people each night. The board of zoning adjustment agreed, and the new location was locked up.
Go to a church, city officials said. Go to the Salvation Army. Go somewhere else.
But those groups do what they do, and Room at the Table does something different.
You might think it a typical zoning squabble, the kind of knee-jerk NIMBY reaction to unfortunate people that happens in every town. But there is more.
City leaders told this group, this non-profit that tried to feed the hungry without taxpayer help or government subsidy, that there is no zoning regulation that allows them to exist.
There is no code, no way, no law that lets them feed people who are hungry.
You can’t eat here.
Room at the Table has appealed, but loses money and ground every day. Williamson did not respond, but the city seems content to let the hungry stay that way.
Room at the Table is considering its options. I hope the city – if it truly believes there is no legal way to feed hungry people outside the halls of a church – will simply change its zoning. Quickly.
Or perhaps someone should hand out meals on the City Hall steps. Or on the Court Street sidewalk downtown, in front of that fancy Billy Reid store.
City officials can do what they always do: Pass by on the other side of the street.
John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for Reckon by AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.
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February 02, 2020 at 07:31PM
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Florence to the hungry: You can’t eat here - AL.com
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