this is a classic example of how policing as an institution is broken and should be completely destroyed in its current form, or outright abolished
In March 2023, Avell decided the church would help with overflow from the local homeless shelter next door. He said the church has helped about 100 homeless people in the small city in northwestern Ohio.
By opening his doors for overnight accommodations, Avell violated city zoning laws. Dad’s Place is in a C-3 Central Business District, which prohibits residential usage, Police Chief Gregory Ruskey said in a December statement. Ruskey said the city informed Avell about the zoning violations and notified him of several fire code infractions.
In November, the city of Bryan sent a letter to Avell and Dad’s Place, ordering him to stop allowing overnight guests or face criminal prosecution, according to a First Liberty Institute news release. Avell continued to keep the doors open even after Bryan police came to Dad’s Place and served him a packet of charges on New Year’s Eve. Zoning violations can carry a fine of up to $1,000 per day under Bryan city ordinances.
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Kind of annoyed they didn’t include what the alleged fire code violations were (or state outright that the police would not provide that information), because if they are for code violations that actually make the place dangerous that adds nuance.
But I would bet in the absence of the police talking about specifics, the violations amount to ‘letting someone sleep in the wrong zone’ and other violations that are far less dangerous than being unhoused in winter.
I’ve heard stories about people receiving citations for letting homeless people sleep in their garage on nights with dangerous negative temperatures in Chicago. And while I get that we have laws for a reason to prevent certain situations from occuring that may be dangerous, it seems like if your choice is definitely die from -15F overnight or risk maybe the chance that if the garage catches fire, it wasn’t made to the same fire safety standards as a house… Just seems like a no brainer to me. Usually judges are supposed to read emergency situations like this and throw the charges out, but it sounds like they won’t even negotiate with this guy :/
Usually, when stuff like that is left out it means that the cops were using it as a pretext law (i.e., it lets them “say-so” without having to provide evidence).
the timing of serving the charges would also seem to strongly imply this is an Authority thing more than an “upholding the law” thing–there’s no way these people didn’t think optically about how it’d look to do this on New Years Day, or around that time of year generally
New Year’s Day would have been ideal - a lot of folks would be partied out and not paying attention to the news.
“We didn’t mean that part of the Bible.”
C-3 Central Business District, which prohibits residential usage
Can someone explain the reasoning behind that?
I can understand “no business noise at night in residential zones”, but the reverse looks like total nonsense: “no sleeping in the office”… WTF?
Housing laws are complex and weird and in many cases laws are based on case precedent or specific things happening in an area. They vary greatly from state to state and often include archaic provisions. They also don’t garner a ton of attention from the media, so things sometimes get passed in large bills that are weird one-offs because someone who’s involved in voting on the bill who was important asks for or inserts something due to a particular bias or belief.
Arbitrary Lines is a good, basic primer to the subject and has a bunch of examples/case studies to this end. a lot of modern city zoning–although this might not be true in this case–is just a vast accumulation of exemptions and changes to accommodate one specific property or building with no particular rhyme or reason other than “this was needed to fulfill the intended development at the time”
