A federal judge has ruled that a Colorado gold rush town cannot prevent an evangelical church from providing temporary shelter to unhoused people on the church’s property.
The ruling against the town of Castle Rock comes after The Rock church sued the town for attempting to block it by arguing the church could not park RVs used as residences on site under local zoning laws.
The Rock church had also claimed that the town had violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act because its religious beliefs compel it to run a makeshift homeless shelter to “restore the poor, needy and destitute”.
The ruling represents at least a temporary victory for religious organizations attempting to tackle the country’s increasing rates of homelessness exacerbated by rising housing costs – but facing opposition from local authorities and law enforcement.
The Rock had claimed that under zoning laws the town attempted to prohibit it from providing shelter for “people experiencing temporary homelessness”.
According to the complaint, “as of November 2021, there were two campers on the property” and that from 2019 to late 2023, recreational vehicle campers had been “used on an occasional basis to provide overnight shelter for certain temporarily shelter-challenged persons participating in the [church’s] compassionate care programs”.
In a response, the church claimed that “persons are protected from land regulations that impose substantial burden on a person’s free exercise of religion”.
The town, it said, “does not have the right to tell the [church] which vehicles can be parked in its private lot, how long they can be parked there, and whether someone can sit, stand, eat, or sleep in such vehicle”.
Researchers at Harvard University recently produced a study, America’s Rental Housing 2024, showing that half of all US renters were cost burdened by rents and could no longer afford their monthly bills.
Simultaneously, law enforcement agencies are undertaking sweeps to clear tent encampments that have sprung up in urban areas, directing people who are unhoused to seek shelter at churches and warming centers.
Earlier this year in Ohio, pastor Chris Avell filed a federal religious discrimination lawsuit against the city of Bryan after officials threatened to shut down his Dad’s Place church for housing people in violation of zoning rules.
Avell had been slapped with more than a dozen criminal charges because the church was in a commercial zone. “We need some more low-income housing, we need some more housing for people with disabilities and other issues, we need more housing across the board,” he told USA Today.
Comparable lawsuits challenging local authorities’ efforts to curb outreach services have been filed in Arizona, California, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
In Colorado, the Rock church’s attorney Jeremy Dys said the church’s outreach providing temporary housing for two campers in the parking lot was “a quintessential act of a church to care for those who need shelter on a temporary basis”.
He told Denver’s ABC affiliate that the church hoped that the ruling would be a first step toward permanently allowing the church to offer shelter. “We look forward to making that not just a temporary solution, but a permanent solution,” Dys told the outlet.
