Church sues city to provide shelter for homeless in trailers

By Colleen Slevin

Press Association

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — Behind a church surrounded by rolling prairies on the outskirts of this Colorado town sits the donated camper that Joe Ridenour called home for a year after he lost his job during the pandemic.

He claimed that because he was able to live in the camper, he didn’t have to return to his hometown of Kansas City, where he feared he would start using methamphetamine again.

“Without that trailer and that church, I wouldn’t be alive,” said Ridenour, who now works as a maintenance worker at the county fairgrounds and rents a room from a friend he met at The Rock church. “Drug use would have consumed me.”

Last year, the city of Castle Rock ordered a nondenominational evangelical church to stop violating zoning laws by providing shelter in an RV and other camping trailer. The church responded by suing the city, which is located between Denver and Colorado Springs.

Echoing arguments from other churches trying to serve the homeless from Oregon to Ohio, the Colorado church argues that helping people in need is a religious activity protected by the Constitution. Its lawsuit is peppered with biblical admonitions to believers to care for others. It also notes that surrounding Douglas County, one of the wealthiest in the United States, has no other homeless shelters.

The church property is not zoned for residential use, and zoning regulations prohibit anyone from living in an RV anywhere in Castle Rock.

On July 19, a federal judge ruled that the church can continue to temporarily house homeless people in encampments until the lawsuit is resolved.

The city, which said it would “rigorously defend the community’s zoning authority,” declined to comment on the ruling. In court, the city argued that the church could find other ways to help the homeless, such as opening members’ homes to them or buying properties zoned for housing and providing them with housing.

Earlier this year, the church had to turn down a request to accommodate a mother and three children under the age of 7 who were living in a car in one of its trailers, said Pastor Mike Polhemus.

“The Word of God actually commands us to love those who are struggling and poor and give them shelter,” Polhemus said. “That’s our mandate. And we believe that goes beyond county codes or city codes or any other codes, that these are things that are commanded by God.”

Nearly a decade ago, the church began sheltering homeless women and children in its gym one night a week as part of a church network that took turns opening doors for them. In 2018, the church began allowing homeless men (after interviews and background checks) to stay in the trailers. The church network stopped its mission to homeless families last year, and The Rock could only shelter people in the trailers.

After the July 19 ruling, Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for the First Liberty Institute, an organization representing the church, said, “I’m confident they’ll get people back into their campers as quickly as possible.”

The lawsuit is based on both the church’s freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment and a federal law intended to protect places of worship from discrimination in zoning decisions.

The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed with bipartisan support in Congress in 2000, prohibits governments from enacting land-use regulations that significantly burden religious practice without a compelling reason. It has helped a wide range of faiths build or expand places of worship, but it has also been invoked in legal battles over efforts to help the homeless.

Before The Rock filed his lawsuit, a church in Bryan, Ohio, filed a similar federal lawsuit earlier this year when its pastor was charged with a crime for allowing homeless people to shelter there. The church and city officials are trying to negotiate a resolution to the lawsuit, which also accuses the city of violating a 2000 federal law.

Two other recent lawsuits also alleged violations of this right.

In March, a federal judge ruled that the city of Brookings, Oregon, could not restrict the church’s meal services for the homeless. A lawsuit by St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church argued that the ordinance, which limited the program to two days a week and required a permit, also violated the church’s right to freely practice religion.

Last year, a Christian nonprofit in Santa Ana, California, was cited and threatened with prosecution for feeding the homeless. The group settled a lawsuit against the city after the Justice Department intervened.

Lauren Langer, a Los Angeles attorney who represents cities in land-use cases, said lawsuits against municipalities that fight houses of worship over their care for the homeless do happen periodically but can be expensive and lengthy.

“Even if the Church wins, it will still be a long road,” she said.

Some communities and churches in California have taken a different approach — forming partnerships to create spaces where people living in vehicles can park overnight while also providing services such as restrooms, trash pickup and security, she said.

Sonia Moran, who lives with her husband and two sons in a home adjacent to the Castle Rock church, wasn’t initially concerned when she learned it was sheltering the homeless in a trailer. But that changed when the church proposed building affordable housing on its 54-acre property.

She doesn’t believe the buildings will actually be used by teachers and emergency services, as the church claims, and fears the development will attract residents who could increase crime in her quiet, safe neighborhood.

“How can we trust them when they can’t even follow the applicable zoning and land use laws?” said Moran, who also believes the church may be trying to profit from the project.

Polhemus denies that. A former civil engineer who worked in Houston real estate before taking over as his father’s church pastor, he said providing workforce housing is not a profitable venture.

Moran also said she doesn’t believe Castle Rock has a homeless problem and that the church should focus on a place it does have, like Denver. The county, for its part, has provided $1.1 million to build a shelter 30 miles away in Aurora that could house at least five county homeless people.

Before moving into the church’s RV, Ridenour slept in his truck in the Target parking lot, staying temporarily in motels or with a friend. He said he lost his job in June 2020 when his truck broke down on his way to Denver.

The church hired an experienced carpenter to work on the woodwork in the lobby. The money Ridenour earned helped him pay off debts and buy clothes for job interviews, he said, and gave him a sense of contributing to the community.

“They showed me my worth, which I had lost,” he said.

Now that Ridenour is feeling stronger, he is preparing to return to Kansas City.

“God made this journey a journey for me so that I could return to my family and my children, completely transforming myself,” he said.