Peace Village and the Neighbors We Walk Past

Every city has people it would rather not see. In Rochester, for years, one answer to homelessness was to raze the encampments and scatter the people — out of sight, out of mind. This week, our city took a step in a different direction, and Christians in Rochester should be paying attention.

## What happened

According to the Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester may reopen Peace Village — the city's only sanctioned homeless encampment — after years on hiatus. A $1.15 million funding proposal (up to $1,155,891, to be exact) was headed for a City Council vote on September 22. The money would come from the city's Opioid Compensation Fund and would pay City Roots Community Land Trust to operate the village through June 2027.

Peace Village was established eight years ago, after repeated razing and displacement of homeless encampments across the city. The land trust owns the plot at 97 Industrial St. Redevelopment stalled a few years ago, and the shelters sat in storage while officials worked through organizational and insurance issues. The new proposal would install 19 pallet shelters on the site, along with on-site case management and pathways to physical and behavioral health care for unhoused adults 18 and older. The legislation was submitted September 1 by Mayor Malik Evans and City Council President Miguel Meléndez, following Melendez's 390-page February report on the region's approach to homelessness.

Whatever you think of the policy details, one thing is clear: the city is choosing, at least for now, to see its homeless neighbors rather than scatter them.

## The poor are neighbors, not problems

Here's where faith has something to say. Our culture tends to treat homelessness as either a policy problem to be solved or a nuisance to be managed. The Bible treats poor people as neighbors to be loved — image-bearers of God whose dignity doesn't depend on their housing status.

Jesus opened His public ministry by reading from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor... to set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Luke 4:18). That's not a metaphor. Our Lord identified Himself with the poor, was homeless Himself ("Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" — Matthew 8:20), and told us that how we treat "the least of these" is how we treat Him (Matthew 25:40).

A pallet shelter is not a home. Nineteen shelters won't end homelessness in Rochester. But there is a moral difference between a city that bulldozes encampments in the night and a city that says: you are our neighbors, you deserve a safe place to sleep and a path to care. Christians should notice that difference — and then go further than policy can.

## What the church can do that the city can't

Government can fund shelters. It can't love people. Programs can provide case management; only a community can provide belonging. That's where the church comes in.

If Peace Village reopens, the people who move into those 19 shelters will need more than services. They'll need someone who knows their name. Someone who sits with them. Someone who believes their life has purpose beyond their circumstances. That's what the ordinary life of a faithful church offers — not as a program, but as a people.

This is a big part of why we're planting a church in Rochester. We want to be a congregation that doesn't just talk about Luke 4:18 but walks it — present among the poor, the struggling, the overlooked, with the good news that in Christ, no one is disposable.

If you're already serving Rochester's homeless community — through shelters, street outreach, or just quiet faithfulness — thank you. You are doing the Lord's work.

## Join us

If you're a church seeker in Rochester who wants your faith to mean something for this city's most vulnerable neighbors, come be part of what God is doing. Rochester NY Affinity Church launches Sunday, September 27. Learn more at smsnovel.com.