Neighbors Feeding Neighbors will continue to serve a hot meal under threat of arrest and citation from Eugene Police Department. “If I go to jail, five other people are going to still serve breakfast,” Lisa Levsen,  Neighbors Feeding Neighbors lead organizer and board member says. The city says the issue is lack of liability insurance.

After serving food at Washington Jefferson Park for over a decade, first as Eugene Catholic Worker then as Breakfast Brigade, Levsen says there were no issues up until a year ago. The city moved them to their current location, under the highway overpass at Fifth Avenue and Washington Street.

To secure their current spot, Neighbors Feeding Neighbors successfully negotiated with Eugene Parks and Open Space (POS) to obtain a special use permit last year.

Neighbors Feeding Neighbors paid $40 monthly for the permit.

Before they secured their spot under the overpass, Levsen says they were serving on the sidewalk at West First Avenue and Washington Street, near the park’s horse shoe pits and skate park. “In the rain, in the snow, in the ice,” she says. Although Levsen says the city of Eugene is trying to move Neighbors Feeding Neighbors, the nonprofit wants to stay in its current spot due to its central location and protection from the elements. 

“Who wants to eat mushy food?” she says. “Ideally, what we want is a building.”

Ira Bastian, a homeless man who’s been visiting the Neighbors Feeding Neighbors food line for a year, says this kind of behavior from city employees isn’t surprising. “There’s plenty of us getting harassed. They don’t see it as harassing us as opposed to just doing their job,” Bastian says.

“You want us to be wet and cold?” he says while waiting in line for a plate of French toast casserole and pork roast with baked pears and onions. On the days Neighbors Feeding Neighbors serves meals, Bastian says that’s where he gets his food.

While more than 100 people waited in line for food, EPD officers assisted the department’s parks resource officers in clearing out a tent on the opposite street corner. Melinda McLaughlin, EPD public information director, says this call was unrelated to the Neighbors Feeding Neighbors activity.

Scott Alan Stepnik, who has been unhoused for over a decade, says the city needs to change its tactics, but he knows it won’t.

“If you’re going to stop this feed line and you’re going to keep harassing homeless people, you better build a bigger jail,” he says with a warm cup of coffee in hand. 

This is a food line that Kelly Shadwick, the Parks and Open Space community engagement manager, says is currently out of compliance. Shadwick writes that all special use permits come with terms — terms Neighbors Feeding Neighbors failed to follow.

“POS worked for months to try and get NFN to come into full compliance with their permit,” Shadwick writes to Eugene Weekly in an email. 

Finally, Parks and Open Space determined it would not renew Neighbors Feeding Neighbors’ special use permit heading into September because of the nonprofit’s failure to provide proof of liability insurance.

“I’m pretty emotional. I have been since August,” Neighbors Feeding Neighbors volunteer and retired pastor Wayne Martin says.

Martin says the nonprofit will do anything in its power to make sure they’re in compliance with their permits and parks rules.

“We’ve been cooperating with the things that they wanted to make sure we did a year ago,” he says. Those terms were “keep your vehicles out of the park and show us proof of insurance,” he says.

Levsen says they’re uninsured and still “shopping for insurance” after separating from their last fiscal sponsor on Sept. 8, Burrito Brigade, which provided their liability insurance policy. 

Under Eugene Parks and Open Space rule 1.004, all special event organizers — like Neighbors Feeding Neighbors — must maintain a liability insurance policy with coverage of at least $2 million.

“I guess we could do a lot of damage to the freeway or something,” Levsen says.

“We’re a nonprofit that raises $10,000 a year,” Levsen says. All of that money is spent on food, the rent for the kitchen it’s made in and the cook.

“It will cost us $1,000 a year to have liability insurance, but that’s part of what we need to do.”

This cost is amplified by the cost of a new permit, she says.

Shadwick writes that the nonprofit will have to pay $40 for every day they’re in the park, not monthly. Due to the amount of space Neighbors Feeding Neighbors uses, they’ll pay an additional $25 daily. To continue to use the cars that transport the food, Levsen says there’s an extra $10 daily fee on top of that.

That’s $75 to the city every day Neighbors Feeding Neighbors operates in Washington Jefferson Park to feed the hungry.

“They’re arbitrary and capricious,” Levsen says. She estimates that this will cost the nonprofit an additional $1,500 every month just to serve food for the same amount of time they do currently: 16 days a month.

And they’ll continue to do so with the threat of arrest hanging over their heads, Levsen says. Eva Danelle Carlson, who says she’s been coming to Neighbors Feeding Neighbors for years, says she’ll join them.

“I will come down here. I’ll get myself arrested. I don’t care. These people are like the guardian angels for all of these people,” Carlson says.

Food, supply and clothing donations can be delivered to 873 Belair Drive from 9 am to 6 pm. To make a monetary contribution visit bit.ly/NFNDONATE.