Christian BritschgiMarch 26, 2024 at 7:40 AMBravissimos/Dreamstime.comHappy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free, where this week’s stories include:New York City refreshes its housing emergency declaration, and with it, its system of rent stabilization.Congress’ resident socialists, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), have reintroduced their Green New Deal for Public Housing bill.California’s “builder’s remedy” wins big in court.But first, it’s another case of zoning against the Good Samaritan.Arizona Town Fines Church for Feeding the HungryA church in the border town of San Luis, Arizona, is suing the city government after its pastor was fined for distributing food on church property. The Gethsemani Baptist Church argues in a new federal lawsuit that those fines are part of a campaign of “harassment and intimidation” officials are waging against the church’s legal, longstanding food ministry.”This has been a vital ministry helping people, ranging from people crossing the border to people as far as away as Tucson and food pantries around the area that rely on this church to feed people,” says Jeremy Dys, an attorney with the First Liberty Institute, which is representing Gethsemani Baptist Church.Gethsemani Baptist Church, and its pastor Jose Manuel Castro, have been distributing food, clothing, and other essential items to the poor, for over two decades from its property a few blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border.For almost all that time, the city government was actively supportive of the church’s ministry, according to its lawsuit. The city allowed the church to store food in a city-owned warehouse, and local elected officials participated in its food drives.Since a 2012 zoning code update, the church’s operation of a food ministry—which included receiving, storing, and distributing food and hot meals—in a residential area was considered a “legal non-conforming use” by the city.Dys says the city’s amicable relationship with the church ended with the election of San Luis Mayor Nieves Riedel, a named co-defendant in the lawsuit, in late 2022.Riedel did not respond to Reason’s emailed request for comment.Following her election, the mayor told the church they could no longer store food at a city-owned warehouse nor use the public park across the street from the church to distribute food, per the lawsuit.Throughout 2023, the church also received letters from the city saying that it couldn’t accept semi-truck deliveries on its property and that its storage and distribution of food on-site changed the character of its food ministry from a legal, non-conforming use into an illegal zoning violation.To appease the city, the church’s pastor agreed to minimize the storage of food at the church and to have semi-truck food deliveries brought to a separate property, where they’d then be transferred to a smaller trailer and brought to the church.Nevertheless, the city continued to assert that the church’s food ministry was a zoning code violation. In February, Castro was twice cited by city officials. In the first incident, he received a ticket for handing out food to a crowd of ten people on the church property.In the second incident, he was …
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