Homeless feeding bans: Well-meaning policy or war on the poor?

[didymus]

LA Times:

Homeless feeding bans: Well-meaning policy or war on the poor?

You can’t just feed the homeless outdoors in Philadelphia anymore; you now need a permit.
In Dallas, you can give away food only with official permission first.
Laws tightening regulations on aid to the homeless are popping up across the country, according to a recent USA Today report: “Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, Oklahoma City and more than 50 other cities have previously adopted some kind of anti-camping or anti-food-sharing laws, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.”

So the question being asked by many critics is: Are American officials trying to help the poor -- or legislate them out of sight?
“Starting in about 2006, several cities began arresting, fining, and otherwise oppressing private individuals and nonprofits that feed the homeless and less fortunate,” Baylen Linnekin writes at Reason.com. He cites a Las Vegas ban that Nevada's American Civil Liberties Union chapter called “among the first of its kind in the country.”
Such bans are now more commonplace, Linnekin writes: “In New York City, for example, Mayor Michael Bloomberg banned food donations to the homeless earlier this year ‘because the city can’t assess their salt, fat and fiber content.’ ”

City officials usually cite safety and public health when trying to regulate the feeding of homeless people, which is often the province of religious groups for whom giving alms and comfort to the poor is as much an act of compassion as a part of religious doctrine.
In Philadelphia — where the ACLU launched a lawsuit last week attacking the ban on the outdoor feeding of homeless people, enacted June 1 — the plaintiffs in the suit include Chosen 300 Ministries Inc., the Rev. Brian Jenkins, the Welcome Church, the Rev. Violet Little, the King’s Jubilee, the Rev. Cranford Coulter and others, according to the Pennsylvania Record.

“Food sharing programs for the homeless also express an important message about the desperate circumstances of the poor,” the suit says, according to the Record. “The programs have been hugely successful, furthering the religious mission of the plaintiffs and providing, at no cost to the city, a needed social service. The programs have functioned continuously without significant interference by government officials or adverse effect on the public interest.”

Okay, I can hear a lot of you saying the homeless are on the street due to their own bad decisions. In most cases, probably so.
But these laws have the effect of restricting religious freedom. The first I heard of Mayor Bloomberg's new regulations on food donations to shelter was a NY Times story "No More Kugel". An Orthodox Jewish group had been donating kugel (a kind of pot pie) to shelters for years and suddenly -- no more! Not without complying the new regs which would require analysis by a lab, dietitian, &c. Of course, what congregation, or parish, or mosque can afford to comply when they're depending on volunteer cooks and donated food?

Message to the poor: you will depend only on the State.
Message to the religious (or anyone else) you will help only thru State-approved programs!