LoDa project: Feeding the homeless

MOBILE, Ala. - The LoDa Project was back in action Thursday night at Cathedral Square in Mobile. One week ago, founder Aaron Hunt said a Mobile Police Officer told him and other volunteers they couldn't serve hot food at Cathedral Square anymore.

Hunt started the LoDa Project to help clean up the City of Mobile in 2005. He and other volunteers swept streets, washed windows, and picked up trash, but they saw a bigger need in the city. Hunt said he started seeing a lot of homeless people in the downtown area, all of them hungry.

Since then, he and other volunteers from churches across the southeast have cooked hot meals for the homeless, and taken the food to Cathedral Square every Thursday night at 8:00.

Now that LoDa has been told they can't serve hot meals, they are serving snack cakes and coffee, and handing out clothes.

City spokesperson, Barbara Drummond, says the problem with the LoDa project is once the homeless have finished eating, they panhandle at businesses in the downtown area.

"It is just not fair for someone to be sitting in a restaurant with their family having dinner and them have someone walk up to them and panhandle for money. That is not fair to them, that is not fair to the business owners, nor is it fair to the city. We have a wonderful city and we want to keep it that way," said Drummond.

She said the city does not have plans to shut down the LoDa Project.

"I think they'll be moving back to Bienville Square, and we're going to talk to housing as well as the homeless coalition about getting social workers down there to talk to those persons, to see if we can give them some housing options...There is no effort here not to have anybody do any charitable endeavor, that's what we were built upon is people having big hearts, and Mobilians have big hearts, and we want to do everything to make sure the two co-exist," Drummond explained.