Pinellas Park's homeless population is a little less hungry these days.
Nearly six weeks after city officials forced the Haven of Rest Mission to stop feeding hot meals to the homeless on premises, the mission's executive director Rev. Lionel Cabral is handing out bagged lunches at day labor facilities in the area.
"I decided to stop serving homeless people if [city officials] pulled off the dogs," Cabral says. "I tried to compromise with them."
Assistant City Manager Thomas Shevlin confirmed he had met with Cabral and came to an agreement.
On Dec. 20, after 16 years of operating a soup kitchen on premises, the city ordered Haven of Rest Mission to stop serving meals, citing a zoning ordinance requiring 14 parking spaces for the establishment. Previously, the mission satisfied the parking requirement by using a St. Petersburg Times substation parking lot. But the Times sold its property last year, and in a Sept. 20 letter to Haven of Rest, Shevlin directed the mission to find new parking spaces, file a zoning variance or cease all soup kitchen activities.
When Cabral couldn't find a business that would share parking, he stopped feeding the homeless. Advocates voiced outrage. Cabral filed a zoning variance, but after the negotiations with Shevlin, he withdrew it. Now he hands out 800 bagged lunches every morning at places where Pinellas Park's homeless already gather.
"What I did was keep us open," he explains, adding the mission also operates a food pantry that feeds 5,500 families each month. "Those numbers are much larger than the meals to the homeless people."
Cabral says he is looking for another location for the mission, something the city's real estate department is actively trying to help him with. But he still wonders how long it will be before the city finds another reason to evict him.
"If they don't want us here, eventually they will get us out," he says.