Houston volunteer defied ordinance to feed homeless
Jury acquitted 66-year-old of breaking 2012 law that limits size of meals to five people
Phillip Picone wasn’t looking for trouble March 3 when he rolled up to the Houston Central Library ready to share four pounds of his customary dish: penne and rigatoni pasta topped with marinara sauce. But he knew he might find it anyway.
Picone, 66, had spent the night before fretting after Houston police cited another Food Not Bombs volunteer for feeding homeless people, something Picone has done at least once a week for the past 12 years. After wrestling with the question of whether he would show up for his normal Friday volunteer work, Picone said a thought struck him — city officials wanted to cow people like him into abandoning their service. Picone steeled himself, cooked the pasta the following afternoon and drove downtown to serve it in front of the library around dinnertime.
His fears came true. After Picone finished dishing out food, an officer cited him for violating a city ordinance that in effect prohibits people from serving more than a handful of homeless people.
On July 28, nearly five months after
Picone got the ticket, a jury acquitted him. But Picone said the fight is not over — for him or others at Food Not Bombs. His is one of dozens of cases that the city of Houston is prosecuting against volunteers accused of violating a 2012 ordinance that bans people from providing “charitable food services” to more than five individuals without a property owner’s approval. For Food Not Bombs, which has served homeless people at the library for at least 15 years, that means getting approval from the very entity that’s trying to force them to move: the city, said Shere Dore, who’s volunteered with the group for 12 years.
In the days after Picone’s acquittal, city officials said they would keep “vigorously” prosecuting the cases — at least 47 have been filed since March 1. They said there’s been an increase in complaints and “incidents” regarding the homeless people congregating near the library.
“It is a health and safety issue for the protection of Houston’s residents,” City Attorney Arturo Michel said in a statement.
On Friday, Mayor Sylvester Turner said city officials aren’t opposed to groups feeding homeless people and are only trying to curb the side effects of doing so, which include discouraging families and children from using the library.
“After people provide the food, they leave but those who are homeless camp around the library and stay,” Turner wrote on social media.
In 2012, the Houston City Council passed an ordinance banning “any organization or individual to sponsor or conduct a food service event on public or private property without the advance written consent of the public or private property owner or other individual with lawful control of the property.”
Picone, who started volunteering with Food Not Bombs the year before, said fear of fines and legal costs led many organizations to stop feeding the homeless. But Food Not Bombs, which advocates for spending on feeding the hungry instead of weaponry, fought back, collecting some 33,000 signatures from people urging the city to rescind the ordinance, said Dore, 47.
Officials didn’t go that far. But on Sept. 5, 2012, then-Mayor Annise Parker wrote in a news release she had carved out an exception for Food Not Bombs by approving the Central Library plaza as a “charitable food service location” for the organization.
For the next 11 years, the city left Food Not Bombs alone, Picone and Dore said.
Then, in mid-February, Dore started hearing rumors the city wanted Food Not Bombs out of the library plaza. Police Chief Troy Finner called Dore, imploring her to persuade the group to move locations, she said. Dore said she told him that she wasn’t in charge of the organization and that the volunteers had collectively decided to stay at the library and fight the city.
The situation escalated on March 1. Picone was serving food at the library that evening when police first made good on their threat by citing another volunteer. A group of Food Not Bombs volunteers deliberated afterward to affirm its decision to take on the city.
As an individual, Picone was more conflicted. He was lying in bed on March 2, the night before he was supposed to serve food again. Thoughts and fears raced through his mind: Would he get a ticket? Would he get arrested? Was he willing to go through either ordeal?
“It made me quite nervous,” he said. Then, it hit him.
“That’s how the city would win. That’s how this unjust law would win, and so that’s when I decided ... ‘Yeah, I’m going to do this tomorrow. I’m going to do this tomorrow, come hell or high water.’ ”