A San Jose food pantry said it might have to close after the city gave it an order to stop handing out food because it is blocking parts of a public sidewalk.<\/p>\n
The Lighthouse Food Rescue on north 17th Street has been put on notice. Code enforcement sent the nonprofit an email saying its use of the sidewalk to distribute food does not comply with current zoning rules.<\/p>\n
The city also says the farmer’s market style setup obstructs a public sidewalk and has given lighthouse 60 days to cease operations.<\/p>\n
The Lighthouse already faced a battle with the city during the COVID-19 pandemic over permits. But this time, the nonprofit might be forced to close.<\/p>\n
Dennis Grijalva is one of those in line preparing hours before opening the food pantry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, food prices have gone up and up and up and up. People\u2019s salaries haven\u2019t really changed. And those who haven\u2019t it\u2019s not enough to compensate for people\u2019s food need,\u201d Grijalva said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a strange time right now where we feel there\u2019s all this red tape in our nonprofit world. And doing a good deed today is just not easy,\u201d president and CEO Pastor Ralph Olmos said.<\/p>\n
Lighthouse says it will fight city hall.<\/p>\n
The nonprofit\u2019s lawyer sent a letter to the director of code enforcement, demanding a sit-down meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve reached out to our Code department to see if we can provide an extension to Lighthouse as they work to find a new location,\u201d said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. \u201cMy team is also working to connect the Pastor with potential partners who may be able to store their resources temporarily while they find a more permanent solution. While we have to follow the law and zoning designations, we can do it with care and find compromises.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A San Jose food pantry said it might have to close after the city gave it an order…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-483425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}