SOUP KITCHENS

[Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>]

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                          SANDY SANDFORT
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C'punks,

On Fri, 2 Aug 1996, Alan Horowitz wrote:

> We require people who have syphilis to divulge who their sex
> partners were...
> 
> We require property owners...to install their septic tanks...
> [to] estop them from contaminating the neighbor's well...
> 
> So why should we be terribly upset about an ordinance which
> makes it illegal to operate a residential kitchen...in a city
> park or a city sidewalk?

Alan's analogies(?) are not parallel.  In his syphilis example,
the requirement exists so that sex partners can be warned that
they may have contracted the disease.  A parallel requirement
might be that feeding programs for street people would have to
divulge that the food was prepared in uninspected home kitchens.

In his second case, you are simply dealing with the property
rights of adjacent land owners.  The case for regulation of
septic tanks is that the contamination from absent or improperly
installed tanks does not reveal itself as would, say, burning
toxic waste in the back yard.  

I find it amusing that the law is supposedly so concerned with
food purity for the "homeless."  Hang out near a fast-food place
sometime and watch the street people dumpster dive for the
half-eaten remains of other people's Big Macs.  That is the true
alternative to volunteer feeding programs.  (That, or getting a
job.)

The truth is that local officials are perverting the health codes
to harass these operations, not to "protect the homeless."  At
it's core, it is a hypocritical abuse of power, not unlike the
invocation of the Four Horseman to keep strong crypto out of the
hands of average Americans.


 S a n d y

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