Nuns who help needy face eviction in S.F.’s Tenderloin

Sister Marie Benedicte l(eft), Sister Marie of the Angels (middle) and Sister Marie Valerie (right) of the Fraternite Notre Dame Mary of Nazareth Soup serve lunch in San Francisco, California, on Monday, February 8, 2016. The landlord nearly doubled their rent and they are being evicted. less Sister Marie Benedicte l(eft), Sister Marie of the Angels (middle) and Sister Marie Valerie (right) of the Fraternite Notre Dame Mary of Nazareth Soup serve lunch in San Francisco, California, on Monday, ... more Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close Nuns who help needy face eviction in S.F.’s Tenderloin 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

In a dingy little Tenderloin kitchen, two French-speaking nuns have devoted the past eight years to feeding the homeless, with their only income being what they eke out from selling handmade pastries at farmers’ markets.

The sisters of the Fraternite Notre Dame Mary of Nazareth Soup Kitchen sleep in a tiny room in the back and do nothing but sell their baked goods and feed the needy. But that’s about to change.

The nuns are in danger of becoming as homeless as the downtrodden folks they help — the landlord is evicting them. He raised their rent by more than 50 percent, they can’t afford it, and the lawyers are fighting it out.

It looks like the nuns have about one month before they must hit the bricks. And practically everyone whose lives they have touched is incensed, from the hungry homeless to those who run other nonprofits.

“This is just crazy — I can’t believe it,” said Douglas Fennell, 60, who was waiting in line Monday with about 30 people for a lunch of sausage, mixed salad and cherry-topped cake. “Maybe someone is just trying to drive us homeless people away. I don’t understand.”

‘They’re so very sweet’

The nuns’ soup kitchen at 54 Turk St. has gained a reputation as having some of the best charity food in San Francisco, but for Fennell the attraction runs deeper.

“They’re so very sweet,” he said. “These nuns give us love, they pray for us, they are friendly. They don’t look down on us.”

Sister Mary of the Angels said she has struggled to understand why anyone would want to evict her and her partner at the kitchen, Sister Mary Benedicte.

“All we want to do is help the homeless,” she said in halting English, thick with a French accent. “Homeless people often have no affection, and here we can say hello and give them some good food. I give my heart.”

The Fraternite Notre Dame religious order that the nuns belong to was founded in France in 1977, according to its website, “to help most destitute people and those who suffer.” Its U.S. headquarters is in Chicago, which is where the two sisters were posted before they came to San Francisco in 2008.

Helping the suffering

Since founding their soup kitchen in one of the scruffiest stretches of the poorest neighborhood in town, the sisters have expanded to feeding lunch to 300 people three times a week, and dinner to 500 people twice a week.

“We don’t look for — what do you say? — publicity,” said Mary of the Angels. “We are only here to serve.”

The sisters’ lawyer, Daniel Fitzpatrick, said the building’s owner wants the nuns to pay the higher rent or leave. Fitzpatrick is fighting the eviction, pro bono, on the grounds that the soup kitchen is also the nuns’ residence because they sleep in the back.

Fitzpatrick said the rent was raised from $3,465 to $5,500 a month as of Jan. 15, and he advised the nuns to fight it. As it is now, he said, they can barely meet the lower rent by selling their pastries.

‘A tough case’

The next step in the case, he said, is for the owner to file court action to enforce the notice he served on Jan. 29 either to pay up or vacate the building. Resolution of the case, one way of the other, should take about a month, he said.

“It’s a tough case, but these nuns are fantastic people,” Fitzpatrick said.

The landlord, Nick Patel, is in India and won’t be back to discuss the case until Thursday, said his lawyer, Michael Heath.

“The owner is putting everything on hold for now, and we will assess the situation when he comes back,” Heath said.

The nonprofit Food Runners, which takes leftover food to the needy, provides much of the food the sisters cook. Last year, it donated the truck they use to deliver meals a couple of times a week to the Civic Center and the Bayview neighborhood.

“It’s an outrage that anyone would think of evicting these two women who work really, really hard to help others,” said the organization’s director, Mary Risley. “I mean, these two women are selfless and incredible.”

Nonprofit layoffs

Michael Pappas, head of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, called the nuns’ plight “symptomatic of a larger issue, the dilemma of the displacement of nonprofits who help the poor all over the city.”

“Here we have this insurmountable homeless problem in San Francisco, and now the people who are trying to help solve it are facing trouble,” Pappas said.

Ever since the recession forced many nonprofits to downsize, Pappas’ organization has convened quarterly meetings of what it calls the San Francisco Faith-Based CEO Roundtable, consisting of a dozen leading nonprofits including Episcopal Community Services and Glide Memorial United Methodist Church.

Several nonprofits, including Catholic Charities, have had to downsize staffs and move to cheaper, smaller facilities as the tech boom reversed the recession locally but also shot real estate prices through the roof, Pappas said.

“It’s a growing problem,” he said. “And as for the nuns — all they want to do is be faithful to what they’ve been called to, and it’s tragic that they may now wind up homeless like the people they serve.

“They are lovely people from another country, and all they want to do is help.”

Sister Mary Valerie, another Fraternite Notre Dame nun, flew out last month from Chicago to help her sisters fight the eviction. She and her comradesare searching for another place to set up shop, but it’s hard in a town where rent is so high.

“There is nowhere else for us to go,” Mary Valerie said. “We need another place, maybe a church.”

‘There are people to feed’

Mary of the Angels shook her head sadly as she heard Mary Valerie talk. Then she brightened.

“I cannot think of that now,” she said. “Right now, there are people to feed. And then there are pastries to make — we are making fruit tarts today. I must stay busy.

“We are in God’s hands.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron

The nuns and their attorney are taking inquiries about their situation at:

Website: http://www.danfitzpatricklaw.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fraternite-Notre-Dame-San-Francisco-231085460565494/