It might be the nation’s best homeless meal.

The starter course on this night is centered around a selection of pizza slices, artisan bread and charcuterie. The entree is a choice of homemade stew, beef or chicken, along with Persian rice, roasted organic vegetables, green salad and cornbread, accompanied by a subtle, home-spiced pasta soup. Dessert is cherry pie.

Tyrone Valiant, 70, walks up the hill from the bus stop for the Wednesday night homeless meal at the Malibu United Methodist Church in Malibu, Calif. Wednesday Nov. 8, 2017. (Photo by Jordan Graham, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Pastor Sandy Liddell visits with Malibu resident Craig Clark during the Wednesday night homeless meal at the Malibu United Methodist Church in Malibu, Calif., Wednesday Nov. 8, 2017. (Photo by Tony Saavedra, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Micah Johnson came in March from Oklahoma for a two-week vacation and stayed after the money ran out. He says he sleeps beneath the stars near the beach. Photographed during the Wednesday night meal at the Malibu United Methodist Church in Malibu, Calif., Wednesday Nov. 8, 2017. (Photo by Tony Saavedra, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Longtime Malibu residents dish up homemade food for the homeless who come from as far away as Venice Beach during the Wednesday night homeless meal at the Malibu United Methodist Church in Malibu, Calif., Wednesday Nov. 8, 2017. (Photo by Jordan Graham, Orange County Register/SCNG)



It’s all served at sunset in an elegant patio, accompanied by light strands draped tastefully between trees and the salty whiff of the nearby Pacific Ocean.

Being homeless in Malibu has its perks.

Every Wednesday, these weekly dinners at the Malibu United Methodist Church and Nursery School — with food supplied by a neighborhood organic market and prepped by local volunteers — draws up to 100 transients. Most sleep somewhere in Malibu, but some take the bus from Santa Monica or Venice.

The church and the patio where dinner is served sits on a hill overlooking Zuma Beach, just down a curved road from Lady Gaga’s $23 million mansion.

It’s an uneasy fit.

Malibu is a city where lobster tails run $42 and come with a seaside view; a bowl of bouillabaisse can cost nearly $30. It’s also a community where the universally well-heeled residents fall into competing camps — some who want to serve the homeless and some who want to shut down the weekly dinner for fear of being assaulted.

Tensions are high enough that the transients who bus in try to stay out of sight until dinner. They don’t want to be spotted by parents picking up their toddlers from the adjacent nursery school, sightings that might prompt complaints to local sheriff’s deputies.

“They are not used to seeing homeless people,” says diner Tyrone Valiant, 70, referencing the locals. “They’re scared to start with…This is rich people territory.”

Malibu is, after all, a city where the view matters.

On Nov. 6, Malibu Mayor Skylar Peak and Councilman Rick Mullen asked the dinner’s founder and main cook, Kay Gabbard, to end the meals for at least a five-month period, starting after Thanksgiving. They want to see if the free meal has any effect on local crime.

“Are we making their lives better, or are we increasing the number of people we have to provide for in this little city?” Mullen asked. “Most of the people in town are generous. What is our goal with the people we refer to as homeless? Get them a home.”

But where?

According to Los Angeles County figures, there are approximately 5,500 homeless people in the West Los Angeles area, including 900 in Santa Monica and more than 1,000 in Venice. In Malibu, the official count found about 180 homeless people, but more recent estimates peg the number at closer to 300.

Sandy Liddell, pastor of Malibu United Methodist, said she hopes to cut a deal with the city that won’t hurt the people who make the Wednesday night pilgrimage for nourishment and fellowship.

“A lot of people don’t like this. They don’t like all the people walking by and they don’t feel safe,” Liddell said. “We’re working hard to keep it open.”

Malibu council members and residents blame the homeless for what they describe as a spike in crime. However, a closer look at FBI data shows serious crime has remained fairly level in Malibu in recent years.

In 2016, the city experienced its highest property crime rate in the past 10 years, including decade-long highs in theft and motor vehicle theft, and an eight-year high in burglaries. But the raw numbers are so low to begin with – comparable to per capita crime rates in similarly affluent Laguna Beach – that the spikes are the kind of relatively small jumps that would make other Southern California cities envious.

Many of the arrests made in Malibu are for low level crimes that garner little, if any, jail time.

Since 2013, deputies made less than 1,000 arrests or citations for issues such as public intoxication and assignments — voluntary and involuntary — to psychiatric facilities. Deputies also have issued about 250 citations for illegal camping, mostly to homeless people, as well as citations for panhandling, fighting, criminal threats and urinating in public.

By halting the Methodist kitchen, Malibu officials hope to be able to look at whether the crimes fall or rise and, perhaps, connect them with the city’s transients, Councilman Mullen said. The city is also considering whether there is a better place for the dinners.

“They’re worried that the riff raff is going to come here from Santa Monica and start staying,” said Wayne Salte, 53, a former construction worker who lives homeless in Santa Monica.

“But every one of the people here will be on the bus back there tonight. There’s nothing up here, so they’ve got to go back to town where they can panhandle and make money.”

But Salte said Santa Monica has launched its own sweeps after discovering its transient population had grown by 26 percent over the previous 12 months. Salte said police in that city are issuing more tickets and fines to the homeless. Santa Monica police did not respond to calls for comment.

For the homeless who come to the Wednesday night dinner, food is only part of the draw.

Diners huddle around tables, nibbling and knoshing. They eat slowly, chatting about the community and how they’re faring on the streets. Many expressed fear that the dinner might soon be put on hiatus.

Marcus Cohen doesn’t fit any cliche image of what a homeless person should look like. He’s freshly shaven and, on this night, dressed in a black BMW jacket and a corporate baseball cap.

He used to earn a living as a caregiver for an elderly woman of means, a woman the 65-year-old Cohen says he loved like his own mother. But when she died, 11 months ago, he was not included in her will.

For the past six months he’s been sleeping in his 1990s-era BMW. He moves it most nights, he says, from affluent street to affluent street.

“I feel blessed just to have a car. In this community, they want to drive out those who are in need. (We’re) just inconvenient for them.”

Loading his plate nearby was Micah Johnson, who says he sleeps “near the beach” in Malibu, though he doesn’t offer more detail out of fear that sheriff deputies will drive him away.

“In the morning, it gets a little cold,” says Johnson, 43. “But it’s not Antarctica.”

Once a construction worker in Oklahoma, Johnson says he came to Malibu in March via Greyhound. He had a few hundred dollars in his pocket when he arrived for a two-week vacation, but liked the place so much that he decided to stay after his money ran out.

“I just wasn’t ready to give it up. I felt California is the place to live the dream,” Johnson said, in a laid-back drawl.

“You see luxury cars zoom by, you sense there’s so much money going around that you think, ‘How do I tap into it?’”

Johnson, who smells like soap courtesy of the public showers at the beach, has taken the first step to get off the streets, recently landing a $14-an-hour job at a local deli. He’s waiting for his first paycheck, and figures to sleep outdoors until he has enough money for shelter.

Johnson and the deli seem a good fit. He prepared the night’s soup.

“I’ve been homeless in the Midwest,” he says. “That’s harder.”

Still, as genteel as things seem at this dinner, Malibu residents’ fears about the homeless aren’t baseless.

Valiant, the homeless man from Santa Monica, heard residents found used syringes on Zuma Beach. He noted that public restrooms in the area have been kept locked, a measure he believes is aimed at detering homeless people from camping there.

And a few people lured by the dinner have opted to stay in Malibu, viewing the city as a safer haven from the rough living they find in Los Angeles and other cities.

Ulises Zambrano, 39,started sleeping on the beaches of Malibu a few months ago after coming up for the dinner, looking to escape the streets of Venice Beach. There, he said, he was frequently robbed and hassled.

“I came here to get some peace and quiet,” says Zambrano, a former accounts manager for a logistics company who says he chose to become homeless a few years back.

“I’m not a criminal. I’m not on drugs. I shouldn’t be profiled. I’m not saying someone has to take care of me, but don’t deprive us of the help that’s already being provided.”

On a recent morning, deputies woke up Zambrano at the beach. He says they were polite, and even gave him a list of other places to sleep.

All were outside Malibu.