Brother Benno’s in the Soup Over Location : Homeless: A soup kitchen in Oceanside needs a new site to serve 225 people a night. But no one wants the facility next door.

Brother Benno’s soup kitchen in Oceanside is a place almost everybody respects yet nobody seems to want near him.

After a few years of relative tranquility, the fragile relationship between the eatery for the homeless and its neighbors has again become strained, and there are new demands for Brother Benno’s to move.

“We’re getting more calls dealing with the increased number of people,” said Oceanside Police Sgt. Bill Krunglevich. “Their combativeness is spilling into the neighborhood.”

These days, Brother Benno’s volunteers dispense free dinners and compassion in a battered old house to about 225 people a night, up from 125 patrons only a few years ago. Neighboring businesses and residents are complaining to police and City Hall that more transients are sleeping on their property, being verbally abusive, littering with broken bottles and narcotics paraphernalia, and burglarizing homes and cars.

“It boils down to neighborhoods, they’re (Brother Benno’s) not going to succeed in or near residential neighborhoods,” said City Councilwoman Lucy Chavez, who has received a spate of angry calls over the last few months. “You can just feel there’s a time coming when we’ll have to do something.”

Members of the Brother Benno Foundation’s board of directors asked about the complaints said they were stunned and had not been informed about the new problems. But in a way, the renewed controversy only underscores Brother Benno’s maddening predicament.

The directors earnestly want to move from the Minnesota Street house that Brother Benno’s has occupied since 1983. But so far, four attempts to relocate within Oceanside have failed because people may revere Brother Benno’s work for the poor, but they won’t open their arms to a soup kitchen in their neighborhood.

“Every time we’ve tried to locate a site, we’ve been rebuffed; we’re very frustrated,” said Nick Sauer, president of the foundation’s board. “We’ve done everything we can to get a place.”

Still, Brother Benno’s is pressing ahead with plans to ultimately establish a facility that will not only feed the impoverished, but also provide a 10- to 20-bed emergency shelter, showers, a laundry, vocational counseling and rehabilitation.

“Just merely to feed people could create another dependency,” Sauer said. “You’ve got to integrate the less fortunate into society.”

For Brother Benno’s, the goal of a full-service operation has been a long time coming, and not without troubles.

Many people in North County have heard the story of how Brother Benno, a local Benedictine monk who is now 80, gave away free food and clothing to the needy in North County. The soup kitchen named in his honor was founded by businessman Harold Kutler, who was inspired after hearing Mother Teresa talk in 1976.

Over the years, Brother Benno’s has become widely regarded, contributing to Oceanside’s reputation as a city that has responded to the homeless problem.

“Oceanside has been diligent about providing services,” said Gloria Valencia-Cothran, an aide to County Supervisor John MacDonald. She said Oceanside is the only city in North County to create a formal task force to help the homeless and to conduct a census of the homeless.

Yet Brother Benno’s has faced adversity. Chavez recalled that problems of vagrancy and friction with the neighbors were eased four years ago by, among other things, Brother Benno’s limiting its hours of service.

“That’s the last time the city asked them to do anything,” Chavez said. But recently, Chavez, an Oceanside native who lives downtown, has been hearing gripes and impatience over how long it’s taking Brother Benno’s to move.

“While everybody’s sitting and waiting for this to happen, we’re getting an escalation of complaints from residents and businesses in the area,” Chavez said.

The latest round of criticism is typified by Mike Barkhausen, president of the Tremont Assn., representing the owners of 10 condominiums across the alley from Brother Benno’s.

He said a hole was punched through the front gate of the complex, and at night, transients simply reach through the hole, unlock the gate, and let themselves in to lie down.

“In the past several months, I’ve noticed more people sleeping on our property. It’s definitely getting worse,” Barkhausen said. He said residents are buying new locks for their doors and taking other safety precautions.

He said one condo was burglarized several weeks ago, and each morning it’s common to find broken bottles, needles and personal items littering the area. “We have a lot of problems with intoxicated people screaming and throwing bottles in the alley and the side street,” he said.

Although Barkhausen thinks calm would be restored if Brother Benno’s moved, he can’t deny a certain admiration for the soup kitchen, saying: “People need to eat, and it’s nice somebody’s there.”

However, he’s not alone in the belief that Brother Benno’s is bad for the neighborhood.

Wayne Thompson, who owns a business a block away from the eatery, said his car was broken into, a trash can was set on fire behind his office, and people sleep and relieve themselves in the parking lot.

“If you go out and ask them to leave because you’re trying to conduct business here, they call you everything under the sun,” he said, blaming Brother Benno’s for attracting loiterers. Finally, he said, “I called Lucy (Chavez). I was looking for this place to be shut down as a public nuisance.”

He gets sympathy, both from Chavez and from Oceanside housing director Richard Goodman. Goodman acknowledges the efforts by Brother Benno’s staff to regulate its dinner clientele, but the sheer numbers make total control impossible.

“All of them come together at one place, at one time. That concentration is causing the trouble in the neighborhood,” Goodman said.

Brother Benno’s serves one hot meal a day, at 5 p.m.

Yet Brother Benno’s has defenders who disagree that the soup kitchen attracts trouble-causing transients.

Valencia-Cothran pointed out that government offices that handle social security, welfare, mental health and probation concerns are in Oceanside, all of which bring many homeless and low-income people to town.

Oceanside, she said, “tends to have a major problem because they have federal and county offices there . . . those facilities draw people who have some degree of problem.”

Regardless of who or what generates the transients, Brother Benno’s leaders say they’re simply trying to run a conscientious and humane service for the downtrodden.

Sauer, learning of the latest complaints, said, “We’ve not heard any of this. We’ve had no calls.” He said he wants neighbors to call if they’re bothered. “I wish they’d communicate with us so we could solve the problems,” he said.

Still, he and another foundation director, Ted Lundquist, are unwilling to let Brother Benno’s shoulder full responsibility for a social problem they say existed before the soup kitchen. Even if Brother Benno’s vanished, Lundquist said, liquor stores in the area would still attract loitering transients.

Lundquist has respect for the people Brother Benno’s helps, pointing out that a survey of patrons showed that most, 57%, have lived in Oceanside for more than a year and 55% had graduated from high school. Some have shelter, but have so little money that they can’t always afford to put food on their tables.

“There’s not a bunch of old winos who come down here and park it for a free meal,” Lundquist said. If anything, he believes Brother Benno’s contributes to the community by feeding the hungry and insisting that patrons respect one another.

“A hungry man is an angry man,” he said. “We think what we do has a preventative aspect to crime.”

The main question now is where Brother Benno’s can go. Sauer admitted that prospects are dim for relocating to a residential or commercial area, which he would prefer so that the soup kitchen won’t be isolated.

But given the opposition he has encountered with past site proposals, Sauer said he’s facing the reality that Brother Benno’s will only win favor in an industrial zone.