Joan Cheever’s legal battle to feed the homeless has gone national, and has also spurred a council member to request a briefing on how the city handles such issues.

Cheever, an attorney, author and co-founder of the Chow Train — a nonprofit mobile food truck from which she prepares restaurant-quality meals for hungry San Antonians — is facing a potential $2,000 fine from a citation issued to her by San Antonio police officers on April 7, while she was serving a three-course meal to homeless people in Maverick Park.

The Huffington Post picked up the story Wednesday by zeroing in on Cheever’s contention that SAPD is violating her right to exercise her religious freedom — as spelled out in the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act — by ticketing her for feeding the homeless. Cheever has a food permit for the Chow Train, but bike-patrol officers issued the citation because she transported and served the food in a non-permitted vehicle.

Cheever has made the case that catering and food-delivery services do the exact same thing. It would be interesting to see if the city plans to hold every food-delivery service to the same standards it suddenly started imposing on Cheever.

Cheever’s citation, the first she has received from SAPD after years of devoting her Tuesday nights to serving the homeless, is part of a recent municipal pattern to impose tough love — minus the love — on homeless people in the downtown area and push them out of the view of tourists, to the Haven for Hope facility. The HuffPo piece points out that SAPD’s action is also part of a national trend.

The article notes that police in Daytona, Florida, cited a religious couple last May who fed the homeless in a public park, and Fort Lauderdale police twice arrested a 90-year-old pastor for doing the same thing.

Inevitably, authorities in such cities will fall back on the excuse, provided last week by SAPD, that they are acting to “ensure public health and safety.” Exactly whose health or safety is being threatened remains a mystery.

Huffington Post also cites a 2014 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless, which states that 21 U.S. cities have cracked down on food distribution to those in need since January 2013.

Cheever’s plight also attracted the attention of Daily Kos, and Texas Monthly ran a long piece about her on its website Wednesday.

Early this week, Councilman Ron Nirenberg responded to the controversy by asking representatives from the city’s Human Services Department to brief the council’s Quality of Life Committee, which he chairs, next week on the issue of homelessness.

Nirenberg said Thursday he doesn’t want to rush to judgment before receiving the briefing, but he expressed concern about the way Cheever’s citation was handled.

“In general, I would say that we need to be reminded that homeless San Antonians are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, and we should do what we can to make ourselves a more compassionate city,” Nirenberg said. “We need to do what we can to identify smart policy that helps us encourage compassion, rather than discourage it.”

Cheever’s situation has stirred considerable local debate over the past week about the most productive ways to eradicate homelessness. Robert Marbut, the founding president/CEO of Haven for Hope, suggested in a Texas Public Radio exchange with Cheever that feeding the homeless perpetuates the problem by diverting homeless people from entering treatment programs that can help them turn their lives around.

It’s a common line of thinking, and one that was debunked by the National Coalition for the Homeless report.

“People remain homeless for many reasons: lack of affordable housing, lack of job opportunity, mental health or physical disability, and lack of living wage jobs,” the report stated. “Food-sharing does not perpetuate homelessness.”

Beyond the question of what policies are most effective, there is the issue of personal freedom: Cheever’s right as an individual to feed hungry people without facing legal harassment.

Nirenberg saw the personal-freedom issue play out last year when then-Police Chief William McManus floated the idea of making it a Class C misdemeanor to give cash to panhandlers. Nirenberg opposed that plan, and McManus ultimately dropped it.

“I’m sure in executing city policy, nobody’s intentionally trying to discourage help for the homeless,” Nirenberg said. “But if we end up preventing people who are trying to do a good service from doing it, I’d like to know why.”

ggarcia@express-news.net

Twitter: @gilgamesh470