Biting the hand that feeds

By Anna Fuore

Since 1979, the Community Soup Kitchen has served its guests at 84 Broadway, but increasingly aggressive efforts by local government and community members aim to dissociate their "community" from the one in the soup kitchen's name. "We've been operating for a long time," kitchen coordinator David O'Sullivan said. "We don't fit into any rules and regulations."

Requests for the non-profit organization to comply with building, health, and zoning ordinances coincide with demands from the kitchen's Dwight area neighbors, as well as from Ward Two alderwoman and real estate agent Olivia Martson, that it curtail its services, or even relocate to another district. "Neighbors started to complain several years ago," O'Sullivan said. "Some of them believe that if we closed, our guests would drift away."

It seems Martson and a portion of the New Haven community are attempting to exploit a section of the 1952 city charter, which stipulates: "Aldermen have the right: To restrain and punish vagrants and beggars; and prevent cruelty to animals." Although the Humane Society is now located in Bethany, it sometimes appears that little has changed.

Sharing the burden

Martson maintains that her district has a disproportionate number of social service agencies, an estimated 30 to 40, and has said that she would like to see her district's burden redistributed throughout greater New Haven. Ward One alderman Josh Civin, CC '96, said, however, that "it is not clear that [Martson's] district is overrepresented." Allegations of her conflict of interests as a real estate agent who earns commissions on sales, and as a property owner with rental units in the Dwight area, have raised questions about her motivations. Martson was notably vilified in Paul Bass's column "Hit and Run" in the New Haven Advocate, in which Bass termed her the "number-one most cold-hearted politician" for 1996. She could not be reached for comment.

Property owners in the neighborhood contend that the community kitchen attracts "guests" from all over the city often congregate outside the building and practice aggressive panhandling. Residents allege that the presence of the community kitchen depreciates the value of their property, and makes it difficult to rent out units.

O'Sullivan and other champions of the community kitchen argue that its guests are largely from the area. They point to the results of a late-summer survey of the community kitchen which 29 percent of the respondents indicated they were from the Dwight neighborhood, and 13 percent reported living in nearby Dixwell. In short, nearly half of those surveyed who visited the kitchen were from the near vicinity.

Guests who indicated living in the Fair Haven, Newhallville, and Hill areas comprised 27 percent combined. The survey had 106 responses, and the community kitchen serves lunch to 220 people on average each day. Thirteen percent of the respondents selected "other," and 3 percent reported being from out of town. "A lot of these people would be here anyway. They are a factor in the neighborhood," O'Sullivan said.

No complaints

Nearby businesses say that guests of the community kitchen have not caused any disturbances. Robert Gribko, a service representative at Fleet Bank--which is located next door to the community kitchen and has the adjacent parking lot--said that the community kitchen's presence has not been a nuisance. "We've only had a couple of complaints about our location," Gribko said, "and those have been from people who were using the ATMs after bank hours. People came up to them while they were using the machines and asked them for a dollar. In that situation you can feel pretty vulnerable. But I don't think that happened because of the soup kitchen. I think it would happen anyway."

Representatives of the Daily Caffé and XandO also expressed no concern over the soup kitchen's presence around the corner. A spokesperson for Trailblazer, which is located a block away on Elm Street and is a sponsor of the soup kitchen, voiced no complaints about the soup kitchen's proximity, and said that it has had no effect on business. "If things were perfect, there would be no one panhandling on the sidewalks," he said. "People who live here are okay with it, but people who come here from the suburbs are scared by it pretty easily."

Cause or symptom?

After a series of discussions with its neighbors, the Community Soup Kitchen is taking measures to comply with nearby tenants' demands, such as ending its breakfast service, and allowing guests to sit inside before meals. O'Sullivan explained that part of the conflict between the community kitchen and its neighbors is a difference in perspective. "We are a symptom of a problem," he said. "They see us as the cause, but we are trying to solve it."

Bill Warfel, the executive warden of Christ Church, which rents the building space in which the community kitchen operates, said the church has no position on the controversy, and stressed that the community kitchen is an independent, non-profit agency. He said, "Most of the congregation approves that we provide a home for the community kitchen."

Warfel noted that neighbors had pressured the church to exert an influence over the community kitchen, which is a separate entity. He said, "We have no desire to put pressure on the community kitchen. The people who eat there are not like our parishioners. They are hungry people, and it is in our tradition as a church, and more specifically as an Anglo-Christian chruch, to help the less fortunate, and to give them as much as we can."

Catches, complications

O'Sullivan maintains that the kitchen is providing a necessary service by feeding the hungry, and that the kitchen is positioned at a location central to its guests'. He notes that lack of transportation, and money for public transport, is a key issue for soup kitchen guests. Relocation to a remote site is, therefore, not an option for the soup kitchen, although the recent flurry of bureaucratic requirements has made it increasingly difficult to remain at the present location.

"It's a complicated thing," O'Sullivan said. "In order to operate, we need the health department to issue a license for a Food Service Establishment, but to get that we need a building permit inspection, and the fire marshall says we need a new fire alarm that will be expensive and will require a lot of time. We're learning as we go along."

The situation could prove even more complicated. Zoning director Phil Bolduc said that a soup kitchen has no specific definition for zoning ordinances. In a normal situation, a soup kitchen operating out of church owned property might apply to the zoning board for special exception, instead of a permit for a second business. "It's a question of being a good neighbor," Balduc said.

In most cases, neighbors and social service agencies decide on acceptable terms for an agreement among themselves, and in that way settle disputes. In a case where neighbors could not settle on terms to accommodate both parties, they might file a formal complaint. Grounds for such a complaint, Balduc said, could be excessive noise and other such disturbances, or--in the case of a soup kitchen--if its presence caused its patrons to linger outside between or after meal hours.

A formal complaint could lead to the denial of a zoning permit. Moreover, if a complaint were filed, and the issue of defining a soup kitchen for zoning purposes came up before a formal body, Balduc said, "It would be a lot of fun." Balduc added that such controversies result from a syndrome known as "n.i.m.b.y.": "not in my backyard."

In many cases, soup kitchens, shelters, and other services that operate out of churches--which are exempt from paying taxes--do not formalize their operations with city permits, although it is required by law. It is difficult to monitor such operations, which are understandably not reviewed until the city is alerted to the situation for a particular reason.

Similarly, the Department of Health is in the process of licensing food service operations according to an ordinance recently passed by the Board of Aldermen. According to one representative of the health department, every distributor of food must be licensed, even an icehouse. Only vending machines are exempt, the representative said.

Last year, the community kitchen provided 81,774 meals, 65,000 of which were served at their Broadway site. "The soup kitchen provides a necessary service for the city," Alderman Josh Civin, CC '96, said. "Martson and her compatriots [who decry the excessive number of social service agencies in the Dwight neighborhood] should go after the lack of jobs and affordable housing. Attacking the services available seems like irresponsible legislating," he said. He said the soup kitchen's permit difficulties were a fault of the administration.

A fair deal

Martson argues that the Dwight neighborhood is doing more than its fair share for the city, and O'Sullivan said that her view is akin to that of people living in the area. He said, "they seem to feel tired; they feel they've done their share, and that things aren't getting better."

Warfel of Christ Church did not specify Martson's involvement among the group of neighbors who were placing pressures on the church. He said that she had been pushing for an ordinance that would prevent any new social service agencies from opening in her ward, and noted that one organization whose presence in her district she had decried was St. Raphael's Hospital.

Those who wish for stronger measures to guard against the presence of the homeless and agencies dedicated to serving them, however, need only look to precedent. See, for example, the September 1952 revision of the charter of the City of New Haven, Article XV, section 50 v.