St. Boniface Church in San Francisco gave the space to live to homeless people in need of housing fifteen years ago. This project is known as the 2004 Gubbio Project. Father Louis Vitale and community activist Shelly Roder started this.
Many people walk into the church every day, sleeping on benches. They were given blankets to cover themselves by the staff.
The Gubbio project website reports:
“When our guests go to the churches, no questions are asked.To remove all barriers to entry, there is no registration document or submission form. Nobody has ever been rejected. Everyone is welcomed, respected and treated with dignity. ”
Even if the two-thirds of the church is reserved for the needs of the project, visitors also allowed visiting the church during the day.
According to a representative of Gubbio:
“This sends a strong message to our neighbors – they are essentially part of the community and should not be rejected when those who have a home come to recollect. This also sends a message to the visitors of the fair – the community includes the tired people, the poor, people with mental health problems and the wet, cold and dirty people.”
The people who are living in the church are not treated as prisoners. 95% of those surveyed say it is a safe and different place to them.
According to TruthTheory, these are the three objectives of this project:
- “Provide a clean, beautiful, calm and safe place where people can rest during the day. cultivate a sense of community among the homeless and understanding and shared responsibility in the community.
- to ensure the physical, social, psychological and spiritual well-being of the homeless people sharing the Gubbio space in Saint-Boniface and Saint-Jean. “
- Homeless people are not always treated kindly, and there are many attempts to force them and laws to prevent the spread of the disease.
According to activists, such laws criminalize homeless people.
According to Mark Lane:
“That means they criminalize homelessness, they have created four laws against the homeless, no camping, no sleep in cars, no manipulation and no food for the homeless.”
Many people in this society have forgotten the value of usability as we live in a cruel world. We have to decide and help homeless people.
This church is a living example of kindness, solicitude, and benevolence.
