Loading ...WCBS Television, the New York affiliate, is reporting that the city is telling several churches that they won’t be allowed to house the homeless on cold nights. This would make an interesting First Amendment freedom of religion test case…
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November 23rd, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Thats an odd story, any more information on it?
November 24th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
It’s hard to tell what this is really about. The story says that the city has adopted a rule that in order to house the homeless, a shelter must be open five days a week. These churches apparently only take in the homeless when it gets cold, and are generally open less than five days a week. Now why you would have a rule like that, I don’t know.
They have a do-gooder type guy saying that thousands of people will be sleeping out in the cold, and the city saying, no, we have sufficient space in city homeless shelters. I suspect there’s an underlying story here, but this article goes to great lengths to avoid it.
As to Frank’s point, yes, I think this is a church/state issue. Churches have a mission to the poor, and the homeless are the poorest of the poor. If the city puts unreasonable conditions on their ministries to these folks, I think that would be a violation of the free exercise clause of the first amendment. Of course, everything is wrapped up in the word “reasonable.”
November 24th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
You have to wonder too, after not dealing with the problem and letting the church’s take on the problem, why is it such an issue for the city now? Its almost like there are some sort of federal funds available thats not beimg talked about. Almost seems to be a “for profit” by the city issue here. Just my observations.