An Ohio pastor who opened his church to the homeless is still putting them in danger

Bryan mayor Carrie Schlade says she just wants to protect "the very people the church claims to serve"

This newsletter is free, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe to Substack or use my usual Patreon page!

---

After a year of negative press, the mayor of Bryan, Ohio (just outside Toledo) is trying to explain why her city has been trying to shut down a fake Christian homeless shelter.

The answer has everything to do with trying to protect the people who need the help—and nothing to do with religious persecution. But you wouldn’t know that if you only saw the propaganda coming from the right-wing propaganda machine.

I first wrote about this story over a year ago, but this all began after a Christian pastor decided to house homeless people inside his church because they had nowhere else to go. He was charged with 18 zoning violations by the city and pleaded not guilty to all of them.

Rev. Chris Avell (screenshot via WTOL 11)

At a time when the weather in the midwest was freezing even more than usual, it seemed downright cruel to punish a pastor for trying to help the less fortunate. After all, isn’t that what Christians ought to be doing? Isn’t that Jesus-like? How is he the bad guy here?!

“What Avell did seemed a humane no-brainer,” said an opinion piece in the Columbus Dispatch. “Pastor Faces Charges For Giving The Homeless A Place To Sleep,” reads the headline at Above the Law.

Those were fair points. Homelessness really is a big problem in our country. Cities as small as Bryan and as large as San Francisco have struggled to deal with the issue.

But whenever a right-wing legal group like First Liberty takes up a cause, and the pastor in question does a full media blitz on conservative propaganda outlets, it’s at least worth taking a closer look at why the city was pursuing him before rushing to his defense.

That starts by talking about the church.

“Dad’s Place” isn’t really a church. It’s technically a video arcade called “Crane N Able's Mini Claw Mania”—clever name!—which is why it was allowed to open up inside a business district. In 2020, Avell requested permission to set up a church inside the building and the city gave it to him with the understanding that he would abide by the city’s zoning laws.

Most news stories about the situation focused on the technical rule that Avell broke: Because his church was located in a business district, residential use on the first floor was prohibited. That meant people were not supposed to eat, wash their clothing, or sleep there.

Yet when the city’s Fire Chief did an inspection of his “church” on November 21 of 2023, he found 18 separate violations… which led to the criminal charges.

But, you might respond, who cares?! These people need a place to stay! It’s bitterly cold outside! And even though there’s a homeless shelter next door to the church, it doesn’t have enough space to take in everyone who needs help!

Those might be fair arguments. They’re certainly compassionate. But what many articles were missing is that city officials weren’t going after Avell because he was helping the homeless. They were going after him because he was literally putting the lives of those homeless people in danger.

It’s the same reason a church can’t just open up a soup kitchen on a whim. There are local regulations that need to be followed in order to make sure everything’s safe. As long as those rules are obeyed, more power to the organizations that do it!

Consider what the Bryan Fire Chief discovered last November during that inspection of Dad’s Place:

… Several of these violations were serious and potentially endanger the lives and safety of those in the building. Some of the serious violations included improper installation of laundry facilities, inadequate or unsafe exit areas, LP cylinder for gas grill improperly placed inside the building, an unpermitted gas dryer installed with impermissible plastic duct outside Ohio Mechanical Code guidelines, no permitted and approved kitchen hood over the stove, and limited ventilation. Immediate temporary solutions were implemented to address the most serious fire hazards and the Fire Chief

The “EXIT” signs weren’t clear.

There was no evidence that the carbon monoxide and smoke detectors were tested regularly.

There was a “gas leak due to improper installation of the unapproved gas dryer.” (The city and a local natural gas provider soon corrected this problem.)

Imagine if there was an actual emergency in the building. A place like this would jeopardize the lives of the people inside because of these kinds of deficiencies. The Fire Chief gave Avell well over a month to fix the most serious of these problems, but follow-up checks on January 9 and 16 found “5 violations that had not been properly corrected.” Furthermore, on January 16, the Fire Chief found 20 people sleeping in cots or on the floor of the building.

The Police Chief later said Avell was only charged with the zoning violations after a “reasonable amount of time was given for both the tenant and property owner to fix the issues. Due to the safety of all involved the city moved forward with filing charges.”

That. Made. Sense.

Avell had plenty of time to correct these safety concerns and chose not to, which meant he was literally putting lives in danger by treating his business as a shelter.

The bottom line is that while Avell may have had the best of intentions, the people he took in were arguably in more danger at his church than they would have been in a shelter that had proper oversight… like Sanctuary Homeless Shelter next door:

There’s a sign for “Dad’s Church” in the window on the left side. The Sanctuary shelter is on the right. (Image via Google Maps)

Sanctuary “fully complies with the zoning code and fire code,” according to the city, and Bryan officials said they were in contact with the shelter about taking in the additional people “coming to Dad’s Place.” (First Liberty said the Sanctuary shelter was on Avell’s side.)

The city also suggested alternative places that Avell could set up shop so that his church could function as a homeless shelter—in a way that would be both safe and legal. But Avell rejected all those options. (First Liberty said Avell is in an ideal spot, able to take in overflow at the shelter and situated near a medical clinic.)

None of that even touched on another problem: Since May of 2023, the city said it had received calls about “inappropriate activity” at Dad’s Place concerning “criminal mischief, trespassing, overdose, larceny, harassment, disturbing the peace and sexual assault.”

The city’s press release also included documentation that Avell was taking in a sex offender—which arguably put the other people inside the building in harm’s way.

Ultimately, the city was simply trying to protect people. There are legitimate criticisms to make about whether officials are doing enough to house the homeless—and we should absolutely have those discussions!—but the charges against Avell were warranted.

If he wants to run a homeless shelter, then he has an obligation to make sure it’s run properly and safely for the sake of everyone he’s taking in—after all, this isn’t just something he did on one cold night. It was over the course of several weeks. The longer he neglects to take safety precautions, the more of a chance there is for something to go horribly wrong.

The upside to Avell’s fight was that it could pressure the city to build another shelter or take steps towards creating affordable housing. It’s hard to sympathize with his “good trouble,” though, when he’s opening defying sensible guidelines while creating new hazards for the homeless. His noble cause might make for good headlines… until a tragedy strikes due to his own negligence.

None of that stopped conservative attorneys like First Liberty’s Jeremy Dys from pretending this was Christian persecution. There’s too much fundraising to do off the claim that a secular government is going after a Christian pastor who just wanted to help the least of these. In fact, when a reporter from HuffPost raised valid questions about the gas leak and fire code violations, Dys refused to acknowledge the problems:

Dys on Friday said the city’s statement is “filled with half-truths and malicious innuendo designed to vilify the most desperate and downtrodden in their community.”

When earlier asked about the fire code violations, he dismissed them as a form of “lawfare harassment” against the church. Each time police visited, Dys said, they presented new “nit-picky” issues that he believes were designed by law enforcement to be impossible to keep up with.

Bullshit. The city didn’t make up new rules just to go after some pastor. The “nit-picky” rules involve things like making sure buildings have properly functioning smoke detectors.

Just because this is a church (inside a video arcade) doesn’t mean it’s exempt from fire codes. For the sake of the people they’re supposedly trying to help, First Liberty would be far better off fixing the violations than complaining about their enforcement. But that wouldn’t make for nearly as good a press release… which means the persecution claims aren’t going to stop anytime soon.

After I posted a version of the above a year ago, First Liberty sued the city of Bryan on behalf of the video arcade church. The two sides got together and agreed to a compromise in early February: The city would drop all charges against Avell as long as he ended “residential operations” and got all the proper certifications and necessary permits.

The détente didn’t last long, though. Avell didn’t uphold his end of the deal, kept housing people despite the dangerous conditions, and so the city had to take action again. The city said in a press release, “We did not want to do this. We must do this for the safety of the people using the church, renters in space above the church and the businesses adjacent to the building… This is a very dangerous situation for the people that Dad’s Place has invited in to stay overnight.”

Mayor Carrie Schlade added that this dispute had led to “her own children being harassed and threatened on social media” along with other threats sent to city employees.

… Chris Avell and his attorneys have managed to turn issues of safety and complying with laws designed to keep people safe into a publicity seeking crusade about religious freedom. That's not the reality. We have no interest in restricting anyone's religious freedom. Here's what I and the City of Bryan care deeply about: That the people using Dad's Place church are safe and have all the protections afforded them by the law.

First Liberty then filed for a temporary restraining order to prevent Avell from being punished.

That didn’t work. A judge sided with the city—and correctly so—earlier this month. In his ruling, Judge J.T. Stelzer wrote that the case was entirely about public safety, not religious persecution, and that “The desire for both ‘religious freedom’ and ‘public safety’ is not mutually exclusive and the two goals can and should easily co-exist.”

“Dad’s Place and Christopher Avell have numerous options available to address the fire chief’s concerns,” Judge Stelzer wrote, while it is “obvious” that the city would be blamed if a fire causing injury or death were to break out inside Dad’s Place and the city had made no attempt to enforce “its own regulations and fire codes.”

First Liberty appealed the decision and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals quickly issued a stay (blocking the judge’s earlier ruling until they have a chance to weigh in).

The conservative group is seriously arguing that because Avell’s religious beliefs require him to shelter those who need it, he should be allowed to ignore all zoning and fire regulations that prevent him from housing people:

The Church believes its mission is to provide a place of refuge and rest 24-hours a day, which includes the physical rest of sleep. The City has ordered the Church to stop providing that rest. The City’s actions therefore plainly burden the Church’s religious exercise.

In a fundraising appeal, First Liberty cites the “harassment and hostility” of the city and how officials are “abus[ing] their position to vindictively go after Good Samaritans like Pastor Chris. This can’t be allowed to happen in America.” There’s no mention of how Avell is literally putting all those people he’s housing in danger. (None of that matters to Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who weighed in on behalf of the arcade-church.)

And now First Liberty is trying to turn this into a full-blown Culture War battle by leaving out the pertinent details. Late last week, an attorney for the group, Ryan Gardner, wrote in the Columbus Dispatch about how city officials “put Ebenezer Scrooge to shame.”

Sadly, it appears nothing will deter the city from its conquest to criminalize compassion.

Indeed, it is unclear if even visits from the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future would cause the city to change course.

One can only hope that a higher court will intervene in this case, protect Dad’s Place and its congregants and provide a Christmas miracle to a church in desperate need of one.

There’s virtually no mention of all the safety violations, no mention at all of the sex offender, and a desperate attempt to link what the city is doing today to how churches were allegedly persecuted during COVID because they couldn’t meet in person to spread a deadly airborne virus.

It led Mayor Carrie Schlade to issue a rebuttal in the same newspaper on Monday, essentially making the case for how the city has to enforce its own rules because public safety should matter to people. She also points out that the city has given this particular church plenty of leeway (that it didn’t necessarily deserve).

It is important to understand that when serious violations of the fire code are detected, typically the building is closed until the owner or tenant can get proper permits from the state to complete the work. If the business chooses not to comply, a fire inspector can and will bar the doors. We chose not to do this, specifically because we did not want to violate the church’s right to religious freedom.

The church was given the ability to appeal the fire code violations to the State Board of Building Appeals. They chose not to, essentially admitting they were not in compliance and had no intention of coming into compliance.

…

… it’s not a surprise that three separate courts have issued decisions rejecting Dad’s Place’s claims against the city.

…

As we continue through the justice system, our entire community continues to suffer at the hands of folks like Ryan Gardner.

This issue has always been and will remain one of public safety, as religious freedom has never been violated. After all, the church has not been closed by the city for a single minute over the last 14 months.

In other words, the city has done everything it can to accommodate Avell’s religious wishes, but there are too many safety precautions being ignored and the city has an obligations to enforce its own rules. Just because Avell doesn’t care about the safety of the people he’s housing doesn’t mean everyone else has the luxury of ignoring that. He thinks he’s protecting people. They’re actually trying to protect people. Just because the city doesn’t have all the resources it needs doesn’t give officials the right to knowingly put homeless people in danger. They have an obligation to take rules seriously even when religious zealots ignore them to advance their own cause.

Avell and his lawyers are more interested in fighting religious battles—and draining city resources—than creating a shelter that would actually protect people in case of emergencies by following sensible regulations.

For the sake of the people Avell is sheltering, the Sixth Circuit should quickly uphold the earlier ruling. If they don’t, more churches may cut corners under the guise of compassion, and they won’t realize how idiotic that is until they’re faced with an actual disaster that kills the very people they claim to be helping.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

---