A Nonprofit Feeds People Experiencing Homelessness In Santa Ana. The City Wants It To Stop

A federal judge is set to decide whether a legal challenge will go forward against the city of Santa Ana for trying to prevent a homeless aid organization from feeding people at its headquarters.

The nonprofit organization Micah's Way filed the legal complaint in January after the city refused to give it an operating permit.

Micah’s Way argues that its practice of feeding the hungry is protected under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

City officials say Micah's Way is located in an area zoned for professional uses, which does not include food distribution.

The dispute is one of many the city of Santa Ana has initiated in recent years over its reluctant status as the county's homeless services hub. Late last year, the city fought off efforts to open a cold weather shelter. And several years ago, Santa Ana sued the county for allegedly "dumping" unhoused people there, forcing the city to spend millions on police and homeless outreach at the expense of services for its majority Latino, working class residents.

The city has asked U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter to dismiss Micah's Way's lawsuit — a move the U.S. Department of Justice does not support. It weighed in on May 9 with a statement of interest urging the court to deny the request. A hearing is set for Monday.

About Micah's Way

Micah's Way has been operating in Santa Ana since 2005, and out of its current location — a single-story converted home on 4th Street, between downtown and the I-5 freeway — since 2016.

On a recent morning, Vaskin Koshkerian poured cups of coffee and handed out pastries to a steady stream of visitors. Koshkerian, who sports a long, white beard and wore camo-print shorts and a backwards baseball hat, runs the scrappy, all-volunteer organization.

The organization's tidy front yard is full of flower pots and fruit trees. The inside is crowded with food and supplies.

Koshkerian said 100 to 120 people usually stop by here daily. The free breakfast is a big draw, but people can also pick up soap, tampons, clean socks and sleeping bags.

Koshkerian also helps people navigate the paperwork needed to apply for housing, benefits, and free state IDs from the nearby DMV. He said many people he helps can't read.

And Micah's Way collects mail for more than 1,200 people who don't have a place to receive things like benefit checks and other important documents and correspondence.

Koshkerian said the most important thing his organization does is engage with people living on the margins of society. "We sit down and talk to people. That's more important than the muffin, the coffee, the mail, everything," Koshkerian said, "because they believe they are human beings."

What's the matter with food?

Still, the free food is clearly a draw. Brian Venegas has been walking the mile or so from where he stays in Tustin to Micah's Way for about four years — "for coffee and pastries, moral and mental support," he said. Venegas said it's been harder to afford meals since his pandemic-era emergency CalFresh benefits, worth about $90 on top of his regular $280 in monthly food aid, expired at the end of March.

"Fast food is so expensive, $10 for a meal like three times a day, that's 30 bucks, so I have to measure what I eat," Venegas said.

Micah's Way's lawsuit argues that feeding people in need is part of its religious beliefs and therefore protected under the First Amendment and RLUIPA. "Helping these poor people, it's God's wishes," Koshkarian told LAist.

The city, in its legal documents, argues that the zoning rule against food distribution in the professional district is "neutral," meaning it applies equally to all properties, and doesn't "substantially burden Micah’s Way religious exercise," one of the legal tests for invoking RLUIPA.

In a statement to LAist, city spokesperson Paul Eakin wrote that Santa Ana "fully supports the expression of religious beliefs as well as helping those in need," as demonstrated by the two large homeless shelters within city limits and their funding for homeless outreach teams.

"In this case, however, Micah’s Way has been using its administrative office to distribute food in an area where this activity isn’t permitted. This has impacted the adjacent residential neighborhood, resulting in multiple complaints from residents," the statement reads, in part.

What do neighbors say?

Micah’s Way, in its initial legal filing, countered that the complaints the city says it has received have, in fact, come from just two neighbors.

Micah’s Way also claims in its filing that it was unfairly associated with "alleged problems" with a needle exchange that began operating a few houses away in mid-2020. The needle exchange moved out of that location in early 2022.

During a visit this week, LAist met several neighbors who support Micah’s Way. One of them, Jody Watts, said she tries to come by every day.

"I've seen it make a huge difference in some of these people that don't get to eat," she said. Watts also said Koshkerian walks the surrounding streets every morning to pick up any trash that may have been left by people visiting his organization. "It's a great community effort," she said.

Yolanda Lopez and Maria Santos, who said they had lived in the neighborhood for decades, were taking a walk and stopped by to joke with Koshkerian — in Spanish and English. Santos said several years ago, neighbors started finding piles of trash in their driveways and some pointed fingers at Micah's Way.

Lopez said she came to talk to Koshkerian about the problem, and in recent years, the streets have been clean. "La gente necesita tomarse un café, un pan," Lopez said. And that doesn't hurt anyone, she said.

The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act

RLUIPA is a 2000 federal law intended to protect the rights of people who are confined in institutions, like jail, to practice their religion, and to protect the rights of religious institutions to use land for religious purposes. The latter is what's at stake in this case.

RLUIPA has been evoked in numerous zoning disputes across the country and, in California, for example, in Chatsworth, Salinas and San Leandro.

In its statement of interest, the Department of Justice said the Micah’s Way case "raises important questions involving the application of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act." It went on to write that Micah's Way "has plausibly alleged a violation of RLUIPA" and therefore the court should deny the city's motion to dismiss the case.

Dan Dalton, a Detroit-based attorney who specializes in representing religious organizations in RLUIPA cases, said the fact that the departmentt has weighed in on the case is "an extraordinarily significant act."

"You generally don't want to be on the other side of the 'v.' when the Justice Department intervenes," he said.

A hearing on the city's motion to dismiss is scheduled for Monday at 8:30 a.m. Judge David O. Carter, who has handled several major lawsuits over homelessness in Orange County and Los Angeles, is presiding over the case.