Agency to Halt Program to Feed the Homeless
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
The Berkeley Food and Housing Project will shut down its Quarter Meal program, which has served dinner to homeless people for more than 30 years, because of the city’s high living-wage ordinance.
Under that ordinance, agencies that receive city funding are required to pay their employees a living wage set well above the federal minimum wage.
The mandated wage hike and rising workers’ compensation premiums and employee medical benefits have saddled the agency with $110,000 in expenses.