Speaking from personal experience, I spent 5 years sleeping in a Catholic-run homeless shelter. In addition to sleeping, I was able to shower, eat and clean my clothing. To the best of my knowledge, everything was run on what Popeye would call " the ups and squares." Best of all, they didn't push religion on you.
It wasn't ideal, of course. We had to occasionally deal with a homeless person who had....problems. Those individuals were usually dealt with swiftly. And we also had one abusive employee who was finally fired after it was discovered that she'd been stealing and doing drugs. Other than that, the Vets Outreach at that shelter finally managed to place me in affordable housing.
If he was trying to do the right thing and help the homeless, he would have done what he could to fix the issues. But he decided to ignore them and fight with the city instead. Solutions were offered, I’m sure he raised plenty of money, or will for his legal woes, to do the bare minimum required to get up to code, but he’s whining about sitting in court. This is about notoriety, fundraising, and ego, not about helping the needy.
Just because these people don’t have anything doesn’t mean they deserve unsafe conditions. They don’t deserve to be put in harms way because they’re down on their luck or addicted to substances or even criminals, whatever brought them to this situation. They are human beings, they have value as human beings and deserve safety. We really need to stop considering the unhoused as trash. There are effective solutions that our greedy, racist, cruel society refuse to consider, often because of the religious judgement of the folks who are involved.
For years, I helped run a shelter for domestic violence victims, which are technically considered homeless shelters. We had several inspections a year by the state agency that regulated our facility for safety and compliance- including their fire safety subdivision that came in the most frequently. If Avell wants to operate a homeless shelter, he should be held to the same standards as every other shelter. The regulations are in place for important reasons (including rules around communicable diseases and staff misconduct, and countless other rules that actually matter). It’s actually a massive and costly responsibility to operate a homeless shelter, and for good reason - everyday people like Avell can’t just take it upon himself to house people. The reason he didn’t fix the violations is because he had no funding to do so. He probably realized at that point that this venture is much more complicated than simply having compassion. Homeless shelters rely on public funding, and those are grants and contracts that have to be managed, billed, and complied with. See where I’m going? He’s completely out of his depth here.
𝑰𝒇 he had fixed all of those safety issues, there would have only been one zoning violation instead of 18, and we would have been very much on his side. It appears as though he just wants to flaunt his Christian Fucking Privilege. He thinks that he shouldn't have to address those real safety concerns because he believes the people he is making a show of helping are no better than props for his virtue signaling.
I did not know this! The headlines should have been: "Pastor arrested for opening up church despite safety hazards." But I suppose that's less clickbaity. I am a little surprised, that since the violations are public record, that no other reporter did basic research to write about it.
Also, now that you've exposed this, I'm wondering, relatedly, why is there a church inside an arcade. Honestly it sounds like a front for something else. At the very least, I'd like to know if the tax-exempt status of the church conveniently helps the taxable status of the arcade.
I don't see the problem here. If the homeless people die, they're simply going to be with Jesus in heaven because God wants them there. Meanypie bureaucrats just don't understand the greater glory of Jeeeeeeeezus.
When churches were actually asked to open up their doors and help, almost none of them did. Not surprising to see conservative media amplifying the story of a pastor punished for “helping” rather than the hundreds of churches declining to help.
I respect the fact that the priest wants to help the homeless, but the additional details definitely make it clear that he’s in the wrong. Homelessness is a huge issue in the US and turning the topic into another way to amplify your persecution fetish doesn’t help anyone and just takes away from the actual work that needs done to help these people.
I am partaged about this story. On one hand gas and monoxide carbon are not a joke, on the other DM and me didn't end homeless thanks to two social workers who busted their asses to find us a place. If we were confronted to the choice between an unsafe place and the streets with freezing weather*, we would have gone with the first.
* Try sleeping on a péniche by -5°C when the heater is dead. It's barely better than sleeping in the streets.
This needs to be widely circulated by us. We all fell for a story that wasn’t factual or researched! This is what we battle. A cyclone of BS put out by the right for the distractions from the orange monster.
Reverend Avell, thank you for caring about homeless people and wanting to help them.
Some points of advice:
1. Take a lesson from the most familiar part of the Hippocratic Oath, which physicians recite: "First, do no harm." As a helper, it is your responsibility to take adequate precautions to prevent your efforts to help from causing serious harm. Being sloppy, slipshod, and careless is NOT a legitimate part of helping.
2. Your good intentions do not relieve you from diligently following the law. The laws are written and enforced to protect the public, not to persecute you. To think so is narcissistic vanity and hypocrisy.
3. Your being a Christian does not in any way place you above the law. Even if you are the most wonderful, admirable Christian in the world, that does not put you one millimeter above the law. To think so is sanctimonious pride as well as narcissistic vanity and hypocrisy. It's one of the main reasons that people are increasingly becoming disgusted with Christianity.
4. Don't let opportunistic and self-serving organizations "defend" you. You're just a pawn to them. Clean up your act, clean up your facilities, and do the right thing IN THE RIGHT WAY.
I do very similar things in my line of work and the folks that are presented with problems see them as impositions. Even if their god isn't called into question. It's infuriating that a business would take a month to replace an 87¢ light bulb in an exit sign, but they do regularly. I've seen other comments alluding to this point, and they are correct - if a godlike person wanted to aid people, they would care for them in a correct, thoughtful way. Which is drawn from years of experience in horror and delineated in regulation.
Fire codes, like all safety regulations, are written in blood. Knowingly ignoring them in operating a shelter like this is, at the very best, reckless endangerment... and the other issues make it sound like this place was a stewpot of potential abuse just waiting to boil over if it didn't burn down first. I honestly hope that the shelter can be re-opened, but it needs to be brought up to code, and it needs to be subject to appropriate oversight. One pastor just winging it is so much less than those people deserve.
Ultimately, though... this whole situation 𝘤𝘢𝘯 rightly be blamed on the city. However much of an ass this guy is, and however deficient the shelter he provided was, the sad fact is that he 𝘸𝘢𝘴 providing something that everyone else had failed to. That's as much an indictment of the city as it is of Mr. Avell; he should not have cut the corners that he did, and he 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 should not have stubbornly refused to comply when he was notified of the changes he needed to make... but he should never have been in the position of operating a homeless shelter in the first place. Providing adequate shelter space for the homeless 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be the responsibility of the local government- and there, as in all too many other places, the government has obviously not been meeting that responsibility. Nor, for that matter, have the voters who elected them, who would doubtless balk at paying even slightly higher taxes to fund another shelter.
Speaking from personal experience, I spent 5 years sleeping in a Catholic-run homeless shelter. In addition to sleeping, I was able to shower, eat and clean my clothing. To the best of my knowledge, everything was run on what Popeye would call " the ups and squares." Best of all, they didn't push religion on you.
It wasn't ideal, of course. We had to occasionally deal with a homeless person who had....problems. Those individuals were usually dealt with swiftly. And we also had one abusive employee who was finally fired after it was discovered that she'd been stealing and doing drugs. Other than that, the Vets Outreach at that shelter finally managed to place me in affordable housing.
Thanks for the additional info on this. obviously the press releases were leaving out a lot of important stuff.
If he was trying to do the right thing and help the homeless, he would have done what he could to fix the issues. But he decided to ignore them and fight with the city instead. Solutions were offered, I’m sure he raised plenty of money, or will for his legal woes, to do the bare minimum required to get up to code, but he’s whining about sitting in court. This is about notoriety, fundraising, and ego, not about helping the needy.
Just because these people don’t have anything doesn’t mean they deserve unsafe conditions. They don’t deserve to be put in harms way because they’re down on their luck or addicted to substances or even criminals, whatever brought them to this situation. They are human beings, they have value as human beings and deserve safety. We really need to stop considering the unhoused as trash. There are effective solutions that our greedy, racist, cruel society refuse to consider, often because of the religious judgement of the folks who are involved.
For years, I helped run a shelter for domestic violence victims, which are technically considered homeless shelters. We had several inspections a year by the state agency that regulated our facility for safety and compliance- including their fire safety subdivision that came in the most frequently. If Avell wants to operate a homeless shelter, he should be held to the same standards as every other shelter. The regulations are in place for important reasons (including rules around communicable diseases and staff misconduct, and countless other rules that actually matter). It’s actually a massive and costly responsibility to operate a homeless shelter, and for good reason - everyday people like Avell can’t just take it upon himself to house people. The reason he didn’t fix the violations is because he had no funding to do so. He probably realized at that point that this venture is much more complicated than simply having compassion. Homeless shelters rely on public funding, and those are grants and contracts that have to be managed, billed, and complied with. See where I’m going? He’s completely out of his depth here.
𝑰𝒇 he had fixed all of those safety issues, there would have only been one zoning violation instead of 18, and we would have been very much on his side. It appears as though he just wants to flaunt his Christian Fucking Privilege. He thinks that he shouldn't have to address those real safety concerns because he believes the people he is making a show of helping are no better than props for his virtue signaling.
I did not know this! The headlines should have been: "Pastor arrested for opening up church despite safety hazards." But I suppose that's less clickbaity. I am a little surprised, that since the violations are public record, that no other reporter did basic research to write about it.
Also, now that you've exposed this, I'm wondering, relatedly, why is there a church inside an arcade. Honestly it sounds like a front for something else. At the very least, I'd like to know if the tax-exempt status of the church conveniently helps the taxable status of the arcade.
I don't see the problem here. If the homeless people die, they're simply going to be with Jesus in heaven because God wants them there. Meanypie bureaucrats just don't understand the greater glory of Jeeeeeeeezus.
On a similar note, we have stories like this: https://www.inlander.com/news/more-than-200-spokane-churches-were-asked-to-open-their-doors-to-homeless-people-during-dangerously-cold-weather-four-agreed-27303574
When churches were actually asked to open up their doors and help, almost none of them did. Not surprising to see conservative media amplifying the story of a pastor punished for “helping” rather than the hundreds of churches declining to help.
I respect the fact that the priest wants to help the homeless, but the additional details definitely make it clear that he’s in the wrong. Homelessness is a huge issue in the US and turning the topic into another way to amplify your persecution fetish doesn’t help anyone and just takes away from the actual work that needs done to help these people.
I am partaged about this story. On one hand gas and monoxide carbon are not a joke, on the other DM and me didn't end homeless thanks to two social workers who busted their asses to find us a place. If we were confronted to the choice between an unsafe place and the streets with freezing weather*, we would have gone with the first.
* Try sleeping on a péniche by -5°C when the heater is dead. It's barely better than sleeping in the streets.
This needs to be widely circulated by us. We all fell for a story that wasn’t factual or researched! This is what we battle. A cyclone of BS put out by the right for the distractions from the orange monster.
Reverend Avell, thank you for caring about homeless people and wanting to help them.
Some points of advice:
1. Take a lesson from the most familiar part of the Hippocratic Oath, which physicians recite: "First, do no harm." As a helper, it is your responsibility to take adequate precautions to prevent your efforts to help from causing serious harm. Being sloppy, slipshod, and careless is NOT a legitimate part of helping.
2. Your good intentions do not relieve you from diligently following the law. The laws are written and enforced to protect the public, not to persecute you. To think so is narcissistic vanity and hypocrisy.
3. Your being a Christian does not in any way place you above the law. Even if you are the most wonderful, admirable Christian in the world, that does not put you one millimeter above the law. To think so is sanctimonious pride as well as narcissistic vanity and hypocrisy. It's one of the main reasons that people are increasingly becoming disgusted with Christianity.
4. Don't let opportunistic and self-serving organizations "defend" you. You're just a pawn to them. Clean up your act, clean up your facilities, and do the right thing IN THE RIGHT WAY.
See??? Joel Osteen was simply obeying the law when he refused to open his megachurch during Katrina. /s
I said, what does Noah need with life jackets?
Jim?
C'mon Bones it is a boat.
I do very similar things in my line of work and the folks that are presented with problems see them as impositions. Even if their god isn't called into question. It's infuriating that a business would take a month to replace an 87¢ light bulb in an exit sign, but they do regularly. I've seen other comments alluding to this point, and they are correct - if a godlike person wanted to aid people, they would care for them in a correct, thoughtful way. Which is drawn from years of experience in horror and delineated in regulation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire?wprov=sfla1
SO BAD it is good.
https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/421500388_369913812327954_4102140968292556781_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s960x960&_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=dd5e9f&_nc_ohc=LQ9tbO1TdwIAX_4b8OD&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-2.xx&oh=00_AfDXYmYEAgkUfZr7622qLLZIB4DYBQbp6MhHtjlBtqy_xw&oe=65B58F6D
Fire codes, like all safety regulations, are written in blood. Knowingly ignoring them in operating a shelter like this is, at the very best, reckless endangerment... and the other issues make it sound like this place was a stewpot of potential abuse just waiting to boil over if it didn't burn down first. I honestly hope that the shelter can be re-opened, but it needs to be brought up to code, and it needs to be subject to appropriate oversight. One pastor just winging it is so much less than those people deserve.
Ultimately, though... this whole situation 𝘤𝘢𝘯 rightly be blamed on the city. However much of an ass this guy is, and however deficient the shelter he provided was, the sad fact is that he 𝘸𝘢𝘴 providing something that everyone else had failed to. That's as much an indictment of the city as it is of Mr. Avell; he should not have cut the corners that he did, and he 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 should not have stubbornly refused to comply when he was notified of the changes he needed to make... but he should never have been in the position of operating a homeless shelter in the first place. Providing adequate shelter space for the homeless 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be the responsibility of the local government- and there, as in all too many other places, the government has obviously not been meeting that responsibility. Nor, for that matter, have the voters who elected them, who would doubtless balk at paying even slightly higher taxes to fund another shelter.
Ah, yes. The devil is always in the details.