A Courtroom Drama About Feeding Unhoused Houstonians

Nick Cooper stands in the security line amid a sea of people with parking tickets and moving violations. He has an 8 a.m. hearing at the Houston Municipal Court about a citation he received this year for distributing food to unhoused people outside of the Central Houston Library branch downtown. Cooper is one of many volunteers with Food Not Bombs Houston (FNBH) who is facing trial after the City of Houston began enforcing a decade-old ordinance that makes the group’s food distribution—which has been occurring at the site for about 20 years—illegal. 

Houston Police officers have issued at least 63 citations to volunteers around the Central Library branch since Mayor Sylvester Turner declared the ordinance an enforcement priority earlier this year, according to a spokesperson for the municipal courts. The timing seemed strange to volunteers—the ordinance banning food-sharing had been in effect since 2012. The citations, issued for “conduct[ing] a food service event without consent of property owner” carry potential fines ranging from $254 (if volunteers don’t contest the tickets) to as much as $2,000. Rather than eating the fines, volunteers have been opting for jury trials. The ultimate goal is to overturn the ordinance itself. 

“This is an unconstitutional law. It prevents freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. It is part of our group’s mission to share food in public—not in church parking lots or anything like that,” Cooper told the Texas Observer over the phone in the days before his hearing. “This isn’t just a question of us getting out of some individual ticket. … The law itself has to be overturned … but meanwhile, we’ve got to deal with all these municipal lawsuits. They’re going to be a pain in the ass, and we have to fight each one individually.”

On the Food Not Bombs Houston website, a raised fist holding a carrot makes up the group’s logo. Underneath the image, in capital letters, it states: “NO GOVERNMENT FUNDING / BUREAUCRACY / PERMISSION!” 

In July, FNBH volunteer Phillip Picone was the first to go through a trial after being ticketed under the ordinance. A jury found him not guilty in July. But the city has shown no signs of backing down. 

Cooper, a white man in his mid-50s, is bulkier than usual today. His two-year-old daughter is strapped to his chest, and he’s carrying a large backpack full of baby snacks, milk bottles, picture books, and—as a last resort—a tablet loaded with child-friendly content. Both the baby and the bag have to come off before Cooper is allowed to walk through the metal detector.

After security, Cooper arrives at Courtroom 1, where he’s scheduled to appear before Judge Leigh Saint-Germain, a no-nonsense woman who holds promptness in high regard. More than 20 other people sit on the benches in her courtroom, there to face their own potential fines. Cooper doesn’t spend much time in the courtroom—filled with light wood benches with the judge and court reporter enshrined behind plexiglass. Cooper and I are allowed to sit in the hallway to reduce any disruptions from his wide-eyed toddler.  

Cooper has been with Houston’s Food Not Bombs since the beginning. He moved to Houston from New York City to attend Rice University, graduating in 1991. He’s now a full-time musician. His band, Free Radicals, has an eclectic sound: Their nine albums range from jazz to funk to cumbia. They play live at breakdance competitions, street protests, weddings, and funerals. The band’s anti-war message is in step with the mission of Food Not Bombs, a national nonhierarchical group that uses food distribution to spread the organization’s international mission statement: “With over a billion people going hungry each day, how can we spend another dollar on war?”

While Cooper and his fellow volunteers sit through the slog of municipal court dates, some have taken the issue to federal court. 

In March, 44-year-old Food Not Bombs Houston volunteer Benjamin Franklin Craft-Rendon filed a federal complaint against the City of Houston after police cited him on March 1. He claimed the ordinance violates freedoms of speech, association, assembly, religion, due process, and equal protection. The lawsuit states that because Food Not Bombs shares food “with anyone, without restriction” to “communicate its message that our society can end hunger and poverty if we redirect our collective resources from the military and war,” that “the group does not serve food as a charity, but instead as an expression of and to further their political message.”

The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed in May at Craft-Rendon’s request. 

A separate federal suit remains pending in the U.S. Southern District of Texas. Phillip Picone, the first volunteer to have a citation go to trial, sued Houston Police Officer Adam Ancira on March 31 after the officer ticketed him on March 3. Picone later amended his complaint to include the City of Houston as a defendant. 

In this suit, Picone alleges violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights. On the ticket Picone received, the violation was listed as “conduct[ing] a food service event (feed homeless) without consent of prop owner.” In court filings, the city is arguing the suit should be dismissed because both the city and the officer have immunity. 

“Plaintiff’s freedom to share food and associate with the hungry by exercising his Catholic faith can be conducted at any time with the permission and approval of the property owner at 61 Riesner Street,” attorneys for the city said in their motion to dismiss.  

But in the suit, Picone argues that the city’s narrow allowance for public spaces where food-sharing can occur, on a lot that also houses the Houston Police Department, has clear drawbacks. 

“Many of those experiencing poverty or homelessness often seek to avoid interactions with the police due to stigma attached to the former group and the devastating consequences of even a small ticket or short detention,” the lawsuit says. “[D]ue to this justified aversion…many Houston citizens experiencing poverty or homelessness prefer FNBH’s location at the Library Plaza.” 

The suit is set to be sent to jury trial in November 2024. 

Three Houston Police officers sit on the benches outside the courtroom near us. They’re the officers who ticketed Cooper, as well as most of the other volunteers found in violation of the ordinance. The officers talk with Cooper about fatherhood and Cooper’s band, Free Radicals, which has played at some of Food Not Bombs’ events. “Y’all were pretty good,” one officer says. 

Sergeant Jeff Richard is in charge of the Downtown Differential Response Team, which consists of five officers. The team has become the engine behind the enforcement of the ordinance at the behest of Richard’s superiors, but Richard was sure to tell Cooper, “It’s not personal.”

Richard’s team is specialized—the officers handle the Central Business District downtown, an area that includes the Central Library branch. They handle enforcement of things that fall outside of the regular patrol’s purview. Richard notes that there is “a whole lot of stuff out there that happens that’s a violation of city ordinances.” Officers are out there explicitly to enforce this ordinance because of orders from on high. 

Cooper says blaming the police for the enforcement takes the onus off the decision-makers: “I don’t know why we’re only focusing on the cops. There is real estate behind this. This is the mayor behind this. These are library bureaucrats behind this. We are up against a bunch of rich people who don’t want to see homeless people anywhere near their stuff.”

At one point, the judge calls Cooper in. She admonishes him for having his child and says if it happens again, he’ll be held in contempt—which could mean three days in jail and a $100 fine. She schedules him for a jury trial in October.

“This whole dance is over a Class C misdemeanor,” Cooper says. “It’s strange all these resources are going to it.” 

When the food-sharing ordinance was passed in 2012, Mayor Annise Parker published a fact sheet to the city’s website in an effort to “clarify misinformation” about the program. 

The ordinance established a program that allowed individuals or organizations to register with the city in order to share food—provided they undergo food safety training with the health department, among other requirements. This appeared to gel with the stated aim to “improve the quality, quantity and distribution of food for the homeless through training and coordination.” The program would centralize scheduling and require food safety measures. 

But the program was completely optional—the only real requirement was property owner consent. And here’s where it gets tricky: Mayor Parker designated the Central Houston Public Library Plaza “as an approved charitable food service location for Food Not Bombs,” per the statement on the website. It is unclear if, when, and why this explicit permission was revoked. Officials in the mayor’s office did not return requests for clarification. 

The former mayor pointed out another goal in her 2012 letter: to “reduce the disproportionate environmental impact of food service operations on public and private property.” This, some volunteers say, is likely the crux of the reason for the ordinances’ enhanced enforcement this year. 

Libraries across Texas are often the most reliable source of air conditioning and water for residents during the hottest months of the year. But the relationship between the Houston library and unhoused residents has long been strained. In 2005, the city council passed regulations that targeted homeless residents and attempted to deter the use of the library as a safe haven. According to the mayor at the time, residents had been complaining about “abuse” of the library. 

Today, the Houston Public Library faces a modern crisis. It’s “hemorrhaging employees” due to its “toxic” environment, according to a recent report by Houston Landing. And echoes of the early-2000s ethos were clear earlier this month, when Houston City Attorney Arturo Michel told the Houston Chronicle, “There have been complaints and incidents regarding the congregation of the homeless around the library, even during off hours.” 

Earlier this year, city officials from the Houston Health Department posted placards outside of the Downtown Library stating that residents had until 7 p.m. on Friday, February 24, to comply with the charitable food-sharing rules. 

“We knew that something was coming that was different from what had happened in the past,” Cooper said. He noted that city officials had threatened to enforce the ordinance in the past, but they had backed down after public backlash. 

But now, the City of Houston is taking dramatic steps to address purported discomfort, even if it means dismantling safety measures and longstanding services for homeless residents. 

When Cooper’s attorney Remington Alessi and his intern Leobardo Elizondo arrive at the municipal courthouse that morning, they come bearing a new motion to quash. 

The motion cited a strikingly similar case from 2021, one that involved Food Not Bombs volunteers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida In that case, the city had enacted an ordinance requiring volunteers to obtain permission from the city in order to distribute food and other supplies to people in public parks. The 11th Circuit Court determined that the ordinance was unconstitutional because it required city permission without having clear standards for how that permission would be granted. The court’s decision relied on a decades-old Supreme Court decision, Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, which took aim at the city’s attempt to quash civil rights protests by denying permits for the sake of “public welfare,” “decency,” or even “convenience”. 

Alessi said the motion is somewhat unorthodox in municipal court.

“These judges don’t necessarily want to rule on constitutional issues,” he said. “It’s a weird sort of legal thing. There’s a tendency for judges to try and find ways to not rule on civil rights issues, but instead to go find other less political reasons to rule on things. But to me, we’re basically inviting the judges to be on the right side of history.”

“Politics and morals aside,” Elizondo chimes in, “the law is clear.”