First it was Ocean City's order to take down the tents outside the St. Paul's By-The-Sea Episcopal Church that housed the homeless overnight. Now, the church is threatening legal action against Ocean City after the resort warns providing shelter inside the church also violates the zoning code.
RUSH: St. Paul's By The Sea Episcopal Church is once again doing battle with Ocean City. This one though, could become a legal one. This is Don Rush. After taking down the tents outside its building in March that served as overnight shelter for the homeless, the battle has now moved inside. The town had warned the church, the tents violated the resource zoning code. So Reverend Jill Williams says, the church set up a place for the homeless to sleep overnight inside the building.
WILLIAMS: We're a low barrier shelter, so we do not have restrictions. Anyone can come in, whether they are intoxicated or facing a mental illness, chronically homeless, whether they have a police record. We do not turn anyone away. However, there are rules once they're inside the shelter. So we've been open since March 31st...that was the first night that we were open.
RUSH: What's been the response by the homeless?
WILLIAMS: It's been wonderful. Everyone arrives at seven for dinner and they stay... they have breakfast in the morning. Many of these guests previously lived on our property outside, so we know them. We have guests who have been brought to us from the Worcester County Social Services. We have [?] dropping off people. We have the police dropping off people. We have people who are working and just can't afford a place. We have some people that just stay a couple of nights and some people that stay longer, just people resting and having something to eat.
RUSH: Williams says the shelter has served around 900 people over 42 nights. That's an average of 27 per night. The city then began inspections of the facilities, found them to be out of compliance with a zoning code for the district. Specifically, the town's concern was over what are called barrack style living quarters. [Here's] city manager Terry McGean.
MCGEAN: And that has been a long held zoning concern regarding open barrack. We do not allow it for employee housing. There are concerns. For instance, we recently went through a pandemic and open barracks sleeping. There may be some concerns with that. It has been a concern that the town does not want that type of housing within the city, and we've again, consistently enforced that.
RUSH: But now the church is looking at taking the resort to court. Specifically. It points to not only the first Amendment of the Constitution, but also the federal religious land use and institutionalized persons act. Robin Cockey is an attorney for the church.
COCKEY: I would concede that we have to comply with the fire code and we have to provide sanitary safe housing for these folks. But the town cannot stop us from doing something that's fundamental to our creed on the basis of a generic zoning principle, because by federal law, you can't do that in this country.
RUSH: So Cockey wrote a letter to the Ocean City officials warning that the next stop could be federal court. The town counters that the zoning applies to all such buildings. It is not directed at any particular religious group. Here's city manager Terry McGean again.
MCGEAN: Our understanding of that particular law is we cannot single a church out. We cannot enforce a different law on the church than we would elsewhere, but provided our zoning laws are consistent and are not specific to the church, and in this case with the open barracks, and we believe that's the case, and that those laws do apply.
RUSH: The town officials have pointed to services provided by a homeless outreach team made up of city and county agencies, law enforcement and service providers. But Reverend Jill Williams has been critical of the team... saying it is not doing enough for the homeless as she vows to fight on. The full interviews can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM, this is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
