The Organic Soup Kitchen will serve its final Sunday brunch to the homeless from the Veterans Memorial Building on June 13th. After that, the 9-month-old free food program will be just like its patrons, without a permanent home. However, soup kitchen founder and operator Anthony Carroccio said he will immediately begin raising the funds necessary for a mobile pantry, from which he will serve food at a variety of locations on the city’s outskirts.

The Veterans Memorial Building is owned by the county of Santa Barbara but managed by The Veterans' Coordinating Council, a coalition of 11 veterans groups including The Veterans of Foreign Wars and The American Legion. The arrangement allows the groups to use the building rent free, but they must pay maintenance expenses, include a handful of salaries. Sam Diaz, of the American Legion, said asking the Organic Soup Kitchen to leave was a matter of money.

 "It’s not that we want to get rid of them, it’s that we have to furnish money to the county," Diaz said. "And it’s been [given to them] free of charge."
Marge Beavers is the building’s operations manager. She said a church has expressed serious interest in renting the facility on Sunday mornings.
"We really need the revenue," she said.
      Though no one said it was the primary factor, another issue hovering around the edges of the matter are the homeless, undoubtedly veterans among them, who sleep in the alcove of the building’s entrance at night. With no public toilets nearby, some of them urinate and defecate around the perimeter of the building at night, leaving the smell of human waste to greet building workers each morning.
     "It doesn’t look good to [potential renters]," Carroccio said. "I agree with them and I don’t agree with them," he said of the decision. "There’s no side to take here. I can only say what I’m faced with."
      Carroccio, who has worked as a builder-deveoper and publisher of magazines, began serving meals to Santa Barbara’s homeless last September in Pershing Park. He said he’d been thinking about a career change for some time when he woke up at 3 am one morning and decided to do this; to feed the hungry and homeless wholesome food. He began with full meals at the park. On Thanksgiving, Beavers gave him use of the Veterans Memorial Building’s hall and kitchen to provide the homeless a holiday feast. A similar arrangement was made for a Christmas day meal. Since then, the soup kitchen has been serving regularly from the hall on Sunday mornings.
      As far as the campers were concerned, Beavers said the Coordinating Council was thinking of putting up gates to prevent the homeless from sleeping outside the building at night. "They’ve kind of made it like a retreat," she said. However, Beavers hasn’t had any problems with the campers panhandling.
      Since Casa Esperanza’s winter shelter closed on April 1st, the only other emergency shelter operating in the south county is the Rescue Mission. The Salvation Army’s Hospitality house has a series of requirements that must be met before opening its doors, including a clean drug and alcohol test. The Rescue Mission’s emergency shelter is now bunking people in its chapel, to accommodate the overflow. Still, many homeless won’t use traditional shelters even when beds are available. It’s a phenomena many in mainstream society struggle to comprehend but is consistent throughout the country.
      The Organic Soup Kitchen is a nonprofit organization. For more information, or to donate, go to www.organicsoupkitchen.org.
                                                                                                             By Isabelle T. Walker