Panel Delays Decision on Church Shelter

A Southern Baptist preacher and his followers clashed with their neighbors Wednesday night at a packed meeting over his plans to build a homeless shelter on church grounds.

The latest battle involving the Rev. Wiley S. Drake, who leads the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, remained unresolved Wednesday as about 100 neighbors opposed to the 52-bed shelter and as many supporters of the church argued for hours before the Planning Commission. The commission postponed a decision until Feb. 12.

A permit for a homeless shelter had been proposed to resolve the bitter feud between the church and the city, which started when Drake began allowing homeless people to sleep outside on church property and in cars. Positions on both sides have hardened since code enforcement officers began citing the church on Western Avenue for violating the city’s anticamping ordinance.

“What I fear is the lack of order going on at the church,” homeowner Jan Jensen told the commissioners. “I have a son walking to Albertsons who has been hit up for money and observed people defecating. If [Drake] doesn’t have a sense of order, how will it be stopped? Pastor Drake has not given me any reason to trust him.”

But Etta Dunigan, who also lives in the neighborhood, sobbed as she urged the planning commissioners to approve the shelter.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “If you could just look in the eyes of a child and say, ‘No, you can’t stay here, no, you have to go on the freeway. . . . We can help people. If that’s not what we are here for, we don’t have any right to be here.”

Drake insists that his aid to the homeless is a religious mission, protected by the 1st Amendment and by the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

But neighbors said the situation has impinged on their property rights. Publicity on television and in newspapers has drawn the destitute from all over the county to First Southern Baptist, they said. Many homeless people have been trespassing, they said.

City officials had recommended that Drake be granted a permit for the shelter if he met 27 conditions.

Most of the conditions having to do with building specifications are fine, Drake said. But he balked at the condition that he abide by 12 pages of requirements in the Orange County Shelter Guidelines, drawn up by the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force in 1993.

Drake objected to guidelines requiring the shelter to have a mission statement that would be free of religious preference. Mandates for open financial books and for counselors to keep case notes would violate the church’s confidentiality rules, he said.

He was particularly upset about a requirement that the homeless not be pressured about religion.

“We cannot pressure people?” he asked. “We are a church. Churches pressure people. All of these things would be a violation of our religious freedom. . . .”