After being told not to feed the homeless in city parks, Bread of Life Mission (BLM) in Seattle has official permission to continue its ministry.
In January, BLM was told that it could no longer feed the homeless in city parks, a monthly outreach that executive director Willie Parish, Jr. told My Northwest was “just a continuation of what we do on a daily basis.”
But Seattle police and city officials stopped the mission from its ministry, citing a city restriction on outdoor homeless feedings without coordination through Operation: Sack Lunch, a local program that operates from a single site but serves nearly 300 people a day. The restriction is not new, Seattle Human Services Department spokesman David Takami told My Northwest; BLM simply operated in the park for three years without being caught or reported.
But now the mission will continue its work, according to the Global Dispatch.
“After meeting with the Bread of Life Mission over the weekend, the city has decided to allow them to continue their services on the third Saturday of each month until ‘a long-term strategy to coordinate feeding programs’ can be agreed upon,” the article reports.
CT has regularly reported on homelessness, including debate over a wave of recent feeding restrictions in cities such as Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Lexington.
