Caring Kitchen plans move after complaints

Nonprofit’s meals for needy will go to other locations for pickup.

DELRAY BEACH — After two decades of feeding the homeless from a Delray Beach neighborhood, the Caring Kitchen is closing its doors in late July, relocating temporarily and serving fewer meals.

The soup kitchen once served two hot meals a day from a white warehouse-style building on Northwest Eighth Street near Pompey Park. But its place at the center of neighborhood nettled area residents, who complained of streets lined with litter, drug paraphernalia scattered on their lawns and homeless asleep on their doorsteps.

The city, which leased the Eighth Street building to Caring Kitchen for $1 a year, told the soup kitchen last year to stop serving meals from the building and distribute the food elsewhere.

The Caring Kitchen’s lease is up July 31, and the soup kitchen is closing.

“The Caring Kitchen as we once knew it is gone,” said Ruth Mageria, executive director of CROS Ministries, which operates the Caring Kitchen. “It’s very different now.”

The nonprofit will still make meals for the needy, now from Cason United Methodist Church, on Swinton Avenue near Lake Ida Road. The church, however, won’t be a place for the homeless to congregate for meals, as they once did at Caring Kitchen.

The meals will be sent to other locations for public pickup, Mageria said.

The nonprofit had to cut down on distribution, mainly because fewer people showed up for meals after it stopped serving at the Eighth Street location. Caring Kitchen is serving only one hot meal a day but offers leftovers to those who ask, Mageria said.

The relocation to Cason United — which isn’t charging rent, but CROS Ministries will help pay for utility costs — is temporary. The nonprofit is looking for a large space in Delray Beach, between Swinton and Interstate 95 where the need is greatest.

“That’s tough to find in Delray Beach,” Mageria said. “We’re very grateful to Cason for offering us a convenient place.”

The new distribution partnerships with local churches have sparked more involvement from members of the community.

“That’s a positive,” Mageria said.

The nonprofit is also ramping up its much-needed home delivery service. A Palm Beach County homelessness study last year identified a need in Delray Beach for meal delivery to low-income, homebound residents.

Caring Kitchen delivers meals by car or foot to those in need and plans to increase the number of home deliveries, Mageria said.

“Things are different, but our goal is the same: to provide meals to those in need,” she said.