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Four days a week, you can find Food Not Bombs volunteers near the downtown Central Library providing food to Houston’s food-insecure population. They set up a table with vegetarian and vegan meals and sometimes provide additional resources, like clothing or personal hygiene items.
They do this rain or shine, despite the city continuing to give tickets and fines to volunteers.
Since March 2023, the grassroots organization has received nearly 100 citations after former Mayor Sylvester Turner began enforcing the city’s charitable food ordinance.
On Tuesday, Food Not Bombs and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a lawsuit against the city of Houston alleging it violating the First Amendment by enforcing the charitable food ordinance. The group argues that it is not a charity, but instead a political association, and its food-sharing services are a form of political protest.
While Food Not Bombs has become the focus of the ordinance in the last year, the dispute raises questions about how food sharing in Houston operates and what the future holds as Mayor John Whitmire begins his term. A city spokesperson in an email said Whitmire looks forward to meeting and working with individuals regarding the ordinance.
“He is committed to finding a solution in the best interest of people experiencing homelessness,” the spokesperson said.
Here is everything you need to know about the ordinance, Food Not Bombs, and the future of food sharing in Houston.
A history of the ordinance
Former Mayor Annise Parker announced the ordinance in July 2012. In September of that year, Parker provided Food Not Bombs permission to hand out food near the Central Houston Public Library downtown – a location where they have been serving the hungry for nearly two decades.
In an interview with the Landing, Parker said the ordinance was part of different steps the city was taking to improve its response to homelessness at the time.
Feeding people with food insecurities was unorganized, inefficient and at times illegal, she said. Organizations feeding the homeless and food insecure were mostly church-based, and the activities occurred randomly, mostly around the holidays. Food distribution wasn’t consistent or dispersed efficiently throughout the city. It mostly occurred in the downtown area, she said.
The ordinance requires individuals who want to provide food to more than five people at a time to receive the property owner’s consent in order to hold a food-sharing event.
“The illegal part of it was that they were doing it on other people’s property,” Parker said. “And so despite what groups like Food Not Bombs says, which isn’t true, it is absolutely legal to feed any number of homeless people in Houston and anytime you want to as long as you do it on your own property or you have the property owner’s permission.”
The creation of a city program
The city ordinance created a voluntary Charitable Food Service Provider Program, which includes four steps for organizations to be certified by the city to share food. The Houston Health Department and the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County lead the program.
Between March 2023 and Jan. 18, 54 organizations have registered with the program, said Renee Beckham, chief sanitarian in charge of administering the Charitable Feeding Program for the Houston Health Department.
The voluntary program requires organizations to obtain registration; go through training; receive a property owner’s consent; and schedule the food events.
“The purpose of the food safety is to educate people who really don’t deal with food safety on a day-to-day basis,” Beckham said. “They don’t work in restaurants, or grocery stores, anything like that. So we need to get that knowledge to them so they don’t wind up making any of the homeless people sick.”
Food Not Bombs vs. the city of Houston
In 2023, Turner began enforcing the charitable food ordinance and designated one location, 61 Riesner St., for food sharing. The city voided the previous permission Parker provided Food Not Bombs. City officials say the group has been illegally feeding the homeless near the Central Plaza – Houston Public Library four days a week.
Parker said she allowed Food Not Bombs to operate at the library because it was not a random charity, but rather a group that had a regular program and operated consistently, she said.
“This was not about trying to stop people from feeding the hungry. It was, let’s have a logical process,” she said. “I gave them permission to do it on the library Plaza but it was granted permission and that permission can be removed at any time.”
The permission was conditional on the fact that they clean up after themselves and handle the food safely, she said.
John Locke, a volunteer with Food Not Bombs, has been participating in food sharing with the organization for 12 years. The national organization has been active since the 1980s but the Houston-based chapter has been operating since 1994. The organization started its food distribution at the library in 2005, according to the lawsuit.
The organization aims to share food with people who are hungry and not solely people who are homeless.
“We’re eating with them,” Locke said. “So it’s like a potluck – a community potluck is a better description than, you know, feeding the homeless. We’re trying to share food and share food with dignity. We’re eating with you.”
National recognition
The city of Houston has received national recognition for its progress toward moving more people off the streets and into permanent housing. Turner has voiced his concerns about feeding individuals outside the library.
“It is not and cannot be viewed as a homeless shelter. If that becomes the use or the perception, the entire city loses,” Turner tweeted on Aug. 4, 2023.
Feeding people is just fine, Parker said, but it doesn’t solve anyone’s problems nor gets them off the streets.
“They have the ability to be a great partner with the city in doing the work of improving the lives of people who are homeless,” she said of Food Not Bombs. “They’d much rather just show up on the library Plaza and dare the city to ticket them than to become full partners in a nationally recognized initiative that has had great results and moving people out of homelessness.”
Although Parker has not spoken to Turner or Whitmire, she believes Turner was trying to shift folks off the streets and into housing.
Regarding Whitmire’s term, she said she believes he understands the goal is to better manage homelessness and move people into housing. Everyone has to work together to accomplish that end goal, she said.
The future of food sharing in Houston
Prior to the lawsuit, Food Not Bombs and the Texas Civil Rights Project presented a petition to Whitmire, city council members, City Attorney Arturo Michel and Chief of Police Troy Finner calling to end the criminalization of food sharing in the city.
The petition garnered over 24,000 signatures from individuals and over 180 groups. The petition called for three things: the city attorney to dismiss all pending citations, for the mayor and city council to end enforcement of the ordinance, and to repeal the ordinance.
During an interview with the Landing on Jan. 18, Dustin Rynders, legal director of Criminal Injustice at TCRP, said there is a wide group of people across the city who are motivated for different reasons and empathize with their neighbors who are hungry.
“So the idea that a city could restrict that to one location and require police involvement – It’s really inhumane,” Rynders said. “And to me that isn’t in line with the values of the city that I grew up in and love.”
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