Free Food Program in Park Threatened

For about six years, as many as 200 homeless people have gathered on weekdays at W.O. Hart Park, bowed their heads while Mary McAnena recited grace, and then filed through the 89-year-old woman’s free food line.

All that may come to an end if the Orange City Council passes today an ordinance that would require a permit from groups of 25 or more and limit their use of park grounds to once a week. The restriction, which McAnena said would destroy her program, was proposed after neighbors and area merchants complained that the lure of free food has turned the park into a magnet for transients and crime.

Monday, as she ladled soup into bowls for about 120 people, McAnena said opponents of her program refuse to acknowledge the need.

“They just don’t want to see; they want to pretend that the poor people, the homeless people aren’t there,” she said, her voice still clearly carrying the brogue of her native Ireland. “And that’s a sin.”

“They want to make it so I can only come out here once a week,” she said, wiping her hands on an apron patterned with American flags. “I wonder how those people would be feeling if they only had one meal a week?”

But homeowners pushing for the new regulations insist they are not against feeding the homeless, just the use of a public park to do it.

“People look at me like I have horns, like I’m an evil woman,” said Lorna Dishane, who helped compile a 500-signature petition requesting city action on the issue. “Believe me, I’m not anti-homeless. It’s just that a public park is not the place to carry on a private operation like this.”

Dishane, who lives about a block from the Santiago Creek park, said the “undesirables” who attend McAnena’s kitchen linger long after meals, openly drinking alcohol, berating park-goers and leaving litter that includes used hypodermic needles and clothes. She also cites police statistics that show a marked increase in area crime since the food line made its debut.

“I myself have been assaulted there, and one of them followed me home and threatened to burn my house down, to kill me,” she said. “We’ve had a car stolen, a bike stolen . . . it wasn’t like this before.”

One of McAnena’s frequent diners for the past two years, Sam Riemer, said the increase in crime should be blamed on a worsening economy, not McAnena’s efforts. An abrupt end to the work of McAnena and her 20 volunteers would only make matters worse, he said.

“A lot of places around here are going to get robbed if they force these people to steal to eat,” Riemer, 29, said Monday as he finished a plate of free spaghetti.

“They’ll go into supermarkets around here and start stealing. It’s like we’re being forced into jail, forced to do the things that will get us arrested.”

He pointed across the rows of concrete benches to McAnena.

“She’s the best woman in the world. An angel, that’s what she is. Why are they bothering her when there’s real criminals out there? Why are they after us?”

While the fate of McAnena’s short-term operation is in doubt, there is a possibility her work might be transferred by February to the St. Vincent de Paul Society facility at Almond Avenue and Cypress Street.

However, that plan still has funding questions and several possibly difficult layers of city government to pass through, said society spokesman Scott Mather.

But no matter what happens to her program, McAnena said the attempt to cap her efforts bode badly for the community, even the nation as a whole.

“It’s easier to turn away than face reality,” the former nurse said.

“But the reality is there are people who need our help. All of America must realize that, or we’ll rue the day we stopped caring.”