Several Hollister residents used the public comments portion of the Oct. 17 city council meeting in a coordinated effort to bring accusations against True Life Christian Church’s “My Father’s House,” labeling it a “daycare center for the homeless.” They told of homeless individuals loitering in the neighborhood near the facility, located at 910 Monterey St., “waiting to hook up,” and asked the council for help to resolve the situation.
Matthew Courtney, a resident since 2009, referred to My Father’s House as a homeless shelter and said it had opened in his neighborhood Oct. 2015. He said he came to Hollister because it was a good place to raise children.
“Since this shelter opened, every day I see drug use and neighbors are threatened with bodily harm,” Courtney claimed. “Neighbors have had homeless defecating in their front yards. I’ve come out to people sleeping in my front yard waiting for the shelter to open.”
He said that as a new father, he doesn’t think he should have to explain to his child why someone is sleeping on his front yard, or why someone is drinking in public, or why somebody is passed out.
“We’ve been in contact with the city over the last eight months and they’ve either been unwilling or unable to help us,” Courtney said. “It grows worse and worse. Yesterday, I sat on my front porch, intermittently, here and there, and probably counted about 50 or 60 people going in and out of there within an hour or two.”
He said the situation seems to be escalating and he believes people are being brought in from out of town.
“I humbly ask for you to please work with us and do something to resolve this matter,” he said. “We looked into the zoning laws and it’s zoned as a home office, and it’s my understanding, per section 1706-010, it doesn’t meet anywhere close to what’s spelled out in that law.”
Courtney emphasized that high school students walk by the facility every day and that it was a safety issue, claiming that he had been, “threatened by clients of the homeless shelter with death and bodily harm.”
Jim Pleyte, who lives on Monterey Street, said he was at the council meeting in order to back up his neighbor, and talk about what the residents regard as an illegal use of the building at 910 Monterey. He said most of the contacts were with code enforcement officers and he had not received a response, one way or another, about whether their contentions were correct about the illegal use of the facility.
“This large, homeless daycare center, in our view, is an obvious violation of 1706, the home office district, where it lies,” he said. “That zoning and the lack of any use permit were confirmed to me by the planning department. The regulations are intended to preserve the residential and historic character of the area, opportunities for small-scale, compatible offices uses…to generate low pedestrian traffic volumes. This is exactly what isn’t happening in our neighborhood.”
He said his beautiful, historic neighborhood is being seriously compromised by the violation of a city ordinance.
“This large, homeless daycare facility is involved in food distribution, showers, laundry, beverage service, and their own website says more than 130 persons are served by the facility,” Pleyte said. “Our request is that the council encourage our code enforcement people to do something about this, with the assistance of your most capable city attorney to see what we regard as a real nuisance.”
Cindy Rusler said she has lived in Hollister for 25 years, with 19 of those years on Hawkins Street, near My Father’s House. She was the first to refer to the facility by name.
“I am concerned about My Father’s House, which is the homeless center,” she said. “I admire their mission and I’m sensitive to the plight of the homeless. I work in a school that has 142 homeless students. However, my question is in regards to the appropriateness and legality of its location in a residential area.”
She said that when she read an article in the local newspaper about Marci Huston’s difficulties with the homeless near her business at the north end of town on San Benito Street, she said she could relate to Huston because the same things were happening in her neighborhood.
“We also have some older, established people in our neighborhood who are fearful to walk around the neighborhood, especially near the (formerly Hazel Hawkins) hospital,” she said. “For a while, there was a truck parked out there that was full of someone’s personal items, and there was a dog in the truck, and every time we would walk by I feared it was going to come out of the truck.”
Rusler said there are more cars parked on the street that she said are full of personal items, and that loitering has increased.
“Many of these (people) are waiting to hook up,” she surmised. “I’ve been there and seen cars drive up, park, they wait for someone to come out of the homeless center, talk to them, and then they go back into the homeless center. We see people pushing their carts down the street. They sit on the sidewalk and you have to walk around them. The other day, my husband and I went for a walk and there was a guy across the street screaming at a tree.”
Rusler said the situation is very uncomfortable, especially for a neighborhood with children and elderly.
“On top of that, I’ve seen people walking along the street smoking marijuana coming from or to the homeless daycare center,” she asserted. “It’s statistically noted that a majority of those who are homeless suffer from mental illness and/or drug abuse, and this is, indeed, evident. What is of concern to me is that we have had no input into whether this business could be put into our community. My question is, if I were to open a methadone clinic, could I do it without any city council or city approval?”
Pastor Linda Lampe, the founder of My Father’s House, said she had come to the council meeting for another reason, but after hearing the residents’ comments, she wanted to address their concerns. She said she has invited residents to come and see, “who we are and what we do.”
“We are not a daycare center,” she said. “We are a church that is open seven days a week. We follow the Biblical commands of Jesus, who said if someone is hungry, you feed his sheep. And that’s what we do.”
She went on to say My Father’s House also provides encouragement, Bible studies, classes and lectures.
“We’ve connected with the city, the county, and we’ve given people jobs and housing,” she said. “There are very few people who come from outside San Benito County. We fly under the radar. A lot of people don’t even know we’re there. Yes, you’ve had code enforcement on us and they’ve been there. You’ve called the police on us and they have never found any wrongdoing.”
Lampe conceded that some people use drugs, but said the facility has gotten 87 people off the streets and into long-term recovery programs.
“The gentleman in the truck now has a job,” she said, “and he has a place to live. We have children who come there. We have senior citizens and people who can’t even walk. And, yes, we do ministry to them. We’ve encouraged and invited all of you to come and visit us so you could see and you could squelch the rumors. There are no beds there. There’s no one sleeping there. There’s no one getting high there. Because if they did that they’d have hell to pay with me. I don’t put up with that kind of stuff.”
Lampe said she has brought a great gift to the city and that nearby residents should come and be a part of the solution, rather than condemning and being part of the problem.
“I do have an office there, Hollister Community Outreach, and I’m in compliance with that because I don’t have any employees,” she said. “It’s just my husband (Patrick Lampe) and me. We give out Christmas gifts to children and many things of that nature. We’ve been doing that for years. If you came and visit us. If you came to a worship service. If you came to a Bible study. If you came and met some of the people.”
City Manager Bill Avera spoke to those who had voiced their concerns about My Father’s House, stating that code enforcement officers and some council members had been to the facility.
“Hopefully, I can assure everybody that if there is illegal activity going on there that it either has been addressed or will be addressed,” he said.
According to the My Father’s House Facebook page, its mission is to “provide a place for the homeless or in need, to rest their weary soles and rest their weary soul.” It also provides showers, bathroom, clean clothes, food, blankets, hygiene items, fellowship, prayer and Bible study, telephone, internet, e-mail, court advocacy for drug and alcohol placement into recovery programs. In addition, it helps make connections to employment, medical and mental health care, and reunification with family members.
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