Compassion and code violations

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 15th. This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for listening. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: offering shelter amid zoning rules.

In January, a pastor in Ohio was criminally charged for allowing the homeless to sleep inside his church, a building called “Dad’s Place.”

When Pastor Chris Avell decided to keep it open around the clock, he was hit with a zoning violation. Then a fire code violation. Then, a building code violation.

REICHARD: Avell sued, alleging religious discrimination.

Last week, the city dropped its criminal charges against him. But his discrimination lawsuit is still going on. WORLD Correspondent Maria Baer paid a visit to Dad’s Place and brings this story.

MARIA BAER: Pastor Chris Avell is not interested in running a homeless shelter.

CHRIS AVELL: I’ve always said, we’re not a homeless shelter. We’re a church. I just don’t want to lose sight of our mission. We’re called to be a church that’s open 24/7.

In 2019, Avell began renting this space for his church. It’s a small labyrinth of rooms in a row house just a block east from Bryan’s humble town square. This isn’t a standalone building. That detail is important.

Last March, Avell decided to keep Dad’s Place open around the clock. That’s when Maria Shannon began sleeping here, on a couple of chairs in the church’s sanctuary.

MARIA SHANNON: We just hook the chairs together… and they hook together, and they make a pretty good bed.

Next door to Dad’s Place is a bona fide homeless shelter called The Sanctuary, with offices on the first floor and a few bedrooms on the second floor. That detail is important, too.

But Maria can’t stay at The Sanctuary, because she’s in a wheelchair and there’s no elevator over there. They’re usually full anyway.

SHANNON: (Maria, what would your situation look like if you weren’t able to stay here?) Back to the car. Bounce around.

Last November, the city engineer and the Bryan police chief came knocking. They cited Avell for a zoning violation, telling him people can’t sleep inside Dad’s Place. The building is zoned for commercial use, not residential.

The zoning violation set off a chain reaction of additional citations.

AVELL: The fire code stuff didn’t come in until later.

Avell was cited for having a washer and dryer hooked up in the Dad’s Place basement. So he donated the machines to The Sanctuary next door, whose second floor is zoned for residential use.

Avell was cited for having a stove in the church kitchen with no vent hood. He installed a vent hood. Then he was cited for violating the building code by installing the vent hood.

AVELL: So you need to submit plans, the building — it’s like ugh, I don’t know. So we’re just like, “Okay. If we just don’t use it, if we show we’re not going to use it…”

Today the stove sits awkwardly a few inches from the wall, unplugged, with four black holes where the burners should be.

Technically, the zoning violations were criminal charges. But last week, the city dropped those charges “without prejudice,” meaning they could bring them again.

A few weeks after receiving the original citation, Avell sued the city of Bryan, alleging religious discrimination. His lawyers with First Liberty Institute said city officials were selectively enforcing their zoning code against Avell’s church.

AVELL: I do know, literally right next door is an apartment, first floor. (Zoned that way?) I don’t know. I don’t know if it was under the radar. Now I know it was known about...

Avell said the police evicted the longtime occupants of the first-floor apartment next door shortly after Dad’s Place got in trouble.

Avell’s lawyers said the city agreed to drop the criminal charges after closed-door negotiations last week because Avell agreed to “cease residential operations” at Dad’s Place.

That was an easy concession, his lawyers said, because Dad’s Place never had residential operations.

AVELL: I sincerely don’t view what we’re doing even as a homeless shelter. We are literally a 24/7 church and to me it feels like someone coming in and saying, “Well, here’s how you have to run church.”

Avell’s lawyers won’t confirm whether people are still sleeping at Dad’s Place overnight. But they said the two church volunteers who were stationed inside around the clock, to provide security and welcome newcomers, have stopped. Ostensibly, these were the church’s “residential operations.”

SARAH UTLEY: My personal opinion …

Sarah Utley is the administrative assistant for the Bryan Area Chamber of Commerce, just across the town square from Dad’s Place. She said Bryan residents don’t seem to mind that people are sleeping at the church. She said the locals are more concerned about safety. Remember: Dad’s Place is not a standalone building. He has neighbors.

UTLEY: Just, fix your violations man. There’s a taco shop next to you, Taco’s Nachos. Ignacio came from Mexico and started his own business from the ground up. That place if it burns down…

Utley is referring to another of the city’s allegations: that there was a gas leak recently at Dad’s place. According to Avell’s team, this was a pinhole leak the fire marshal discovered in a routine inspection after the laundry machines were unhooked in the basement. No one was evacuated; no alarms pulled. Fire officials advised Avell to ask the gas company to cap the leak. They did.

After the charges were dropped last week, Avell thanked the city in an official statement and said he would “seek proper building certifications for the operations [the church] plans to pursue.”

But as anyone who has sought a permit from a city zoning board or had to parse the legalese of a city’s building code knows, “seeking proper building certifications” isn’t always straightforward.

Things get even more complicated when parties don’t agree on definitions. At the heart of this case is the question: what makes a shelter a shelter, and what makes a church a church?

AVELL: It’s because they’re saying we’re residential. So since we’re residential, then it changes everything because then we’re no longer a church. From my perspective they’ve put us under the burden of both.

The situation has made international news, but with a twist. Usually in cases of alleged religious discrimination against Christians, the media cast the Christians as aggressors. In Avell’s case, he said the media has largely cast him as the victim. He sees God’s hand in that.

AVELL: If the media had been clearer and said this guy’s actually all about Jesus. I have an agenda. My agenda is Christ, period. I am an ambassador of Christ, not an ambassador of the homeless. I’m out here saying, “Repent, and be saved.” That’s my message.

Now that the criminal charges are dropped, Avell is no longer facing jail time. But he’ll be back in court in March for the next hearing in his discrimination lawsuit.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Maria Baer in Bryan, Ohio.

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