Clergy Tussle With Town Over Hobos : Charity: Officials and merchants say church food programs attract transients to the railroad junction. The churches say they’re ministering to the city’s poor.

On a pleasant spring morning, Steve McDaugale and Glenn Fox lie back on their bedrolls next to Dry Creek and muse about survival on the road.

Keep your camp clean and if you go to town, maintain a low profile, says McDaugale, a big, strong-looking bearded man of 40, wearing boots that are patched with strips of plastic.

“And stay away from what we call ‘the citizens,’ ” says Fox, who is 43, small, slender and also wearing a beard.

Not more than 100 yards away, freight cars are banging around the Southern Pacific switching yard at the edge of this historic railroad town 15 miles northeast of Sacramento. It is the biggest switching yard west of the Mississippi River and hobos have been dropping off here to change freights and maybe grab a meal in Roseville as long as anyone can remember.

It is not like the yards in, say, Los Angeles, where gangs are likely to attack you, McDaugale said. Four church organizations in this town of 50,000 cooperate to provide one free meal a day, seven days a week, to anyone who wants one.

“Normally, Roseville has a good reputation,” Fox said.

But these are not normal times in Roseville. City officials say they are sick of the town’s good reputation among hobos and have stirred up a bitter controversy with religious overtones by putting limits on free food offered to transients and by developing a plan to stop such meals altogether.

City officials and merchants complain that tramps do not keep a low profile in Roseville. Instead, they say, transients panhandle, get drunk on the streets, have caused the general deterioration of the old commercial section of the city and are preventing its restoration.

“Historically, when we were growing up, we called them hobos or bums and they were just passing through and they didn’t stay like they’re staying now,” City Councilman Harry Crabb said. “I really think all this started by the (food) providers wanting to help people. God bless them for wanting to help people, but when you do that, things happen to your community.”

Members of the clergy who operate free food programs contend that the great majority of the people they feed are the local poor and homeless. Transients, clergymen say, are just a convenient scapegoat for the problems of downtown deterioration that are really caused by urban sprawl and new shopping centers that lure customers to outlying areas.

“They’re a nice, convenient thing to hang your frustrations on,” said Father Bill Boudier, a deacon with St. Rose Catholic Church and a founder of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Roseville, which runs a food program.

City officials maintain that they want to help the poor and homeless who want to be helped. But some seem to draw fine distinctions.

“These people (transients) are not necessarily the homeless,” said Ed Kilmer, president of the Downtown Merchants Assn. “They don’t have a home, but they are transients. They come off the train.”

In trying to deter transients from coming to Roseville, city officials have come up with a plan to build a shelter and treatment center for the local homeless that would be run by the churches if the clergy members agreedto stop feeding transients.

City Councilman Fred Jackson likes the proposal because it would not only stop transients’ free meals but also relocate people who live in the downtown area “who look like transients.”

Poor people who live in cheap rooms and often walk around town carrying their belongings would be relocated to the homeless shelter and trained to go “back into the work force,” Jackson said. “These people are going to have to be dealt with also. We’re going to have to find a way to relocate them out of the main business district. I’m not saying throw them out. I’m not saying anything inhumane.”

Members of the four religious groups who provide free meals for the poor--St. Vincent de Paul, First Baptist Church, First United Methodist Church and the Salvation Army--had expected plans for a homeless shelter to include a centralized free meal program that would be open to all.

They were caught by surprise when the plan--put together by the city Housing and Redevelopment Division--called for a central facility for food, shelter, counseling and treatment for 80 clients, denying free meals to transients who do not seek treatment to change their way of life.

“As currently designed,” said John Sprague, manager of housing and redevelopment, “there would be no services in the community for that particular group.”

What if the religious groups insisted on running their food centers as well as the shelter?

“The city would have no interest in pursuing that particular strategy,” Sprague said.

Some members of Roseville’s clergy were outraged.

“We’ve got to stop offering any services for the transients so they’ll go away,” said the Rev. Roy Herndon, pastor of the First Baptist Church. “Well, that’s a dream. There’ll be more panhandling if these services are discontinued.”

In the meantime, the City Council escalated the controversy by passing an emergency ordinance May 6 that requires a public hearing and a permit for any new or expanded free food program.

Herndon and some other members of the clergy contend that city officials are interfering with their religious duties to feed the poor and hungry.

“Churches have done this kind of thing down through history,” Herndon said, “and it seems like they shouldn’t be able to pass a law that would stop it.”

Some clergy members indicated that they will defy the new law if necessary.

“The mission of the church is to take care of people and the city said we can’t,” said Father Michael Cormack, pastor of St. Rose Catholic Church. “How are they going to stop you?”

Although city officials cite complaints from business owners about transients in the old commercial center of town, not all merchants there seem concerned.

“I have no problem with it at all,” said James May, owner of a small, no-frills, discount food store in what is called Old Town.

Old Town is made up of three or four streets that run at odd angles and contain little businesses such as a deli-pizzeria, a hardware store, a Mexican restaurant, a janitor supply outfit, a cheap hotel and some closed-up shops.

Old Town is separated from the somewhat newer but antiquated downtown by the railroad tracks. Downtown’s main street, Vernon, is occupied mostly by little antique shops. The old-fashioned Tower Theatre movie house is closed. There are a couple of coffee shops and several small businesses, such as a typewriter store, that have survived.

New Roseville is made up of acres of housing tracts and shopping centers that have moved off to the east in a rush, leaving the old part of town to stagnate.

The transients at the center of the controversy were not in evidence during a recent visit to either downtown or across the tracks in Old Town, where May’s store is located.

May said he sometimes makes sandwiches for transients and even lends them money--which they always pay back.

“I don’t have one tramp who owes me a dime,” May said.

“They’re more honest than the people with regular jobs,” said his wife, Patti. “You can’t turn these people down. I love ‘em.”

Some other merchants in Roseville express sympathy for the transients and efforts are under way to resolve the dispute through a compromise that would provide a homeless shelter and treatment center for the local poor and offer a limit of three days of meals to people passing through town.

The proposal, worked out between the clergy and the Roseville Chamber of Commerce, is to be presented to the City Council on June 10.

But success is not certain.

“I think the chances are fair to good,” Boudier said.

“From my perspective,” redevelopment manager Sprague said, “it’s really too close to call.”

Hobo Junction

Roseville, 15 miles northeast of Sacramento, is a historic railroad town and the site of a Southern Pacific train switching yard. Four church organizations there have been providing one free meal a day to anyone who wants one.