Food Project Must Change or Relocate : W. Hollywood Orders Eligibility Rules for Park Handouts

A nonprofit volunteer organization will have to establish criteria for eligibility in its growing free-meal program in Plummer Park by November or move, the West Hollywood City Council has decided.

The council voted Monday to direct its staff to work aggressively with the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition to find a new home for the handout program in or near the city. The program, which feeds 150 people a day, has drawn complaints from merchants, residents and senior citizens who say it discourages recreational use of the park.

The staff was also ordered to report on the status of law enforcement in Plummer Park before permission would be granted for the program to remain there beyond early November.

Particularly nettlesome for the council is the coalition’s philosophy that a meal should be offered to anyone claiming to need one, even suspected freeloaders and known drug abusers and prostitutes.

Problematic Philosophy

“The philosophy of the program is the problem, not just the location,” said Councilman John Heilman. He said the city’s planned $1.2-million permanent shelter for the homeless, scheduled to open in a converted warehouse in early 1990, will be reserved for people “actively trying to change their situation.” The coalition’s willingness to serve all comers, he said, is “not fair to the . . . people trying to get their lives together.”

The coalition has received $29,000 from the city this year, as well as a $6,000 federal grant and private donations.

Michael Dean, head of the coalition, defended the program, saying: “We don’t think you should use food as a weapon. In effect, you are taking food out of the mouths of 150 of your fellow citizens.” He said the program had operated in the park “virtually without incident” for 2 1/2 years.

The program moved to Plummer Park at the city’s direction in 1987. Before then it distributed food from a church.

Sandra Jacoby Klein, a psychotherapist who serves on the city’s Human Services Commission, said in an interview before the council meeting that the commission had opposed moving the program to the park. The City Council was eager to provide aid for the unfortunate, she said, and “kind of made a snap decision without a lot of investigation into what it would entail.”

Mayor Abbe Land told the council: “What the Food Coalition shows is that there are many people out there living without enough money, or who are homeless or can barely feed themselves. We cannot help each and every person in that predicament.

“Their mission is wonderful,” she continued. “It just does not work in our park. We need to look as a city at what we can do. With 1.9 square miles and only three parks, our resources are limited. We can only help so many people, and we need to try to help the ones that want to help themselves.

“We’ve been at this point before with the Food Coalition,” she said. “We have to face the fact that November may be an either/or vote.”