Gainesville, Florida - Culture - Homelessness - Meal Limit

Meal Limit

Restrictions on feeding the hungry have recently brought infamy to Gainesville when a documentary on the matter, "Civil Indigent" won several awards. A restriction of 130 meals at any site being served to the hungry had for 18 years been an unenforced ordinance until March 2009, when a downtown developer presented data to the City Plan Board (residents appointed by the City Commission to advise the Commission on planning issues) showing that a downtown soup kitchen distributed significantly more meals than the legal limit, which resulted in a strict enforcement of the meal limit ordinance Outrage has engendered much activism, including the founding of the "Coalition to End the Meal Limit NOW!" which organizes protests against, and publishes data about, the meal limit, the gathering of 13,060 signatures by an online petition to repeal meal limit, protesters picketing the Mayor's State of the City Address and picketing developers who lobby City Hall to keep a meal limit on soup kitchens, and groups including the Democratic Party of Alachua County urging the lifting of the meal limit. In 2009, the City Plan Board unanimously recommended to the Gainesville City Commission the 130-meals-per-day limit be lifted and in March, 2011 the City Plan Board again voted unanimously to recommend removing the limit; in March 2011 a downtown developer, contrariwise, asked the City Commission to decrease the number of meals that may be served. The Gainesville City Commission unanimously voted to repeal the meal limit on August 18, 2011, proposing to replace it with a three hour serving window as a compromise. Once the city attorney drafts a new ordinance, two more votes are needed for the change to take effect.