It's food serving legislation being taken too far. The clothes I think are fine, but since they're not inspected by the health department like a restaurant the government can technically shut it down which is complete bullshit.
No, the Good Samaritan Act says free food doesn't have to be inspected as long as it's given "in good faith apparently wholesome food or apparently fit grocery products to a nonprofit organization for ultimate distribution to needy individuals"
All fifty states and the District of Columbia have additional food donation statues that limit food donor’s liability—these currently vary widely, such as by who (i.e., donors, nonprofit organizations), and what foods and food products are covered.
state laws may provide greater protection against liability, but not less
Anecdotally, I don't think so. I used to do some work with a place that did a lot of charity work and would get together bi-weekly to talk about travel and have a banquet. The banquet was always prepared and served in accordance with the law, and there were often tons of leftovers. So we would give the leftovers to the homeless. The health department fined us because we weren't allowed to serve food outside of our establishment.
When I was living on the streets of Boston, one day a random dude showed up giving out McDonalds cheeseburgers. Didn’t look very official. He just rolled up with a big bag and started giving them out.
Did you have some kind of serve safe license that was limited? I wonder why the rules were different than a restaurant letting people take leftovers home.
Were you guys handing out huge trays of food like after thanksgiving or a party, like “who wants this half a turkey in these ziplock bags”, or was it more like a bunch of to go containers handed out?
Seems like the seal of government approval on a person’s ability to handle food safety should apply equally to serving in the restaurant and to prepping food for serving outside that building. Right? Just too complex to have it separated out like that.
This article talks about the ordinance. Yes, you can feed them in specific situations and places. Still, you can’t tell me it isn’t making it intentionally hard to do.
Well first, they don’t really need to “coordinate”. One city can do it on its own and the others that agree can follow. Second, homeless people are often a “nuisance” for cities and this wouldn’t be the first thing they do to intentionally make their life miserable (see anti-homeless benches). Some cities try to solve it with social programs, others just do this stuff waiting for it to “””solve itself”””.
Like the fact that that headline is sensational and wrong? Its not illegal to feed homeless people in those cities, the city governments just require people to get permits and do it in a safe way.