Sarasota church cuts homeless services after violation | Exclusive

A Sarasota church curtailed most of its homeless outreach services Aug. 26 after county code enforcement determined the program was operating as a social service facility on land zoned for single-family residential use.

The Remnant Cafe — which had offered free coffee and meals, hot showers and clean clothes — has operated at Remnant Church of Sarasota, 2895 Ashton Road, since the church, led by Pastor Frank Burns and his wife, Tammy Burns, merged with Ashton Mennonite Church in 2017.

Burns said the outreach served between 100 and 130 homeless people. Most of them either traveled to Remnant Cafe on Sarasota County's Breeze Transit buses or rode a Remnant Church bus from the Breeze Transit depot at 150 N. Lemon Ave. in downtown Sarasota, which

is about six miles northwest of the church.

They later returned to the city after services ended at 4 p.m, Tammy Burns explained.

“It totally took us by surprise last week when, on Wednesday (Aug. 26), zoning comes in and basically issues us a code violation and a cease-and-desist order,” Tammy Burns, the director of the homeless outreach program, told the Herald-Tribune.

Residents of Ashton Enclave Condo Association, a six-home complex built in 2018 and sold to most of the current occupants in 2021, have had issues with homeless people breaking into their lanais, sleeping under elevated porch decks, and defecating in a swale that separates the complex from a 1.9-acre drainage retention area owned by Sarasota County.

What services were offered at the Remnant Cafe in Sarasota?

Until the outreach received notice of the code violation, it was offering meals and day-shelter services similar to those offered by Resurrection House Day Center for the Homeless on Kumquat Court in downtown Sarasota for four days a week.

Remnant Cafe plans to be open from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Wednesdays starting again Sept. 9, when the church offers Bible study, and noon to 6 p.m. Saturdays, when it offers a church service.

“We can serve a meal but we can’t do showers, we can’t do laundry,” Burns said. “We can’t do any of those kinds of services and part of our impact comes from spending time with people and pouring into their lives.”

“Now we’re going to have this 100 to 130 people per day, they’re going to be hanging out in downtown Sarasota — which nobody wants — and they’re not going to get showers, they’re not going to get clothes.”

An urban homeless outreach in a single-family Sarasota neighborhood

The mile-long section of Ashton Road between Swift Road and Red Bug Slough is mostly zoned for single-family homes, though the U.S. Post Office occupies a 5.63-acre parcel on the northeast corner of Swift Road. Remnant Church occupies 3.84 acres east of that.

Next, there are two single-family homes on the north side of Ashton Road, followed by the 9.58-acre Sarasota Christian Church campus that wraps around the backyards of those houses.

The southeast corner of Swift Road and Ashton Road includes a 1.66-acre parcel that was once home to Majestic Ministries of Christ Church.

In December 2021,ABC7 ran a TV spotin which Majestic Ministries Pastor Dan Nagel said homeless people were littering the grounds, defecating on the property and stealing power for cellphone chargers.

Following that broadcast, Nagel was vilified on Facebook — something that Christine Nordstrom said made many residents reluctant to speak out about homeless people trespassing on their properties.

“Everybody was terrified to speak out because the Remnant Church attacked that pastor and called him a poor Christian and a bad Christian and all of these other things,” said Christine Nordstrom, the Ashton Enclave resident whose call to Sarasota County prompted the code enforcement investigation.

“I know what’s coming my way,” Nordstrom told the Herald-Tribune, referencing the vilification heaped on Nagel.

Nordstrom said the number of people staying in the homeless camp fluctuates, but the camp has been behind her home since she purchased it in 2021.

'We know they’re coming through because the motion sensor lights pop on’

Residents of Ashton Enclave and the owners ofArden Courts memory care facility at 5509 Swift Road — the northern neighbor of Sarasota County’s drainage area — are all too familiar with the homeless on the property.

Nordstrom said she had talked with groundskeepers there who mentioned several problems, including homeless people stealing power to charge cellphones.

A spokeswoman for Evergreen Management, the operator of Arden Courts, said corporate owners are aware of the situation and plan to offer a statement on the matter.

Nordstrom, a single mother and founder of the Five-O Donut Co. doughnut shops, grew tired of being afraid to go out on her own lanai, after observing people defecate nearby and finding the screen to her lanai slashed.

“My lanai has been entered and food stolen out of the refrigerator we have on our lanai,” Nordstrom said. “We know they’re coming through because the motion sensor lights pop on.”

Burns said she had not previously been aware of those incidents.

The one instance at Ashton Enclave of which Burns said she was aware occurred several years ago, when a person she described as mentally ill broke into the easternmost of the six homes and was arrested.

Burns said she apologized to the person renting the home and offered to pay for the damage.

“That’s the only one I ever heard of and that was a good several years ago,” Burns said. “If anybody comes to us with an issue we try to immediately address it with the ‘homies  — we call them the homies. Every lunch before we start serving and do prayer we will say the need to watch their behavior both on and around the campus.”

A claim of years of unacknowledged phone messages by Remnant Cafe

Nordstrom said that over the past five years she left her name and phone number several times at Remnant Cafe and at the office of Pastor Burns, who is a practicing physician with First Physicians Group, but never received a call back.

"We've been subject to naked persons, drunk or high, having altercations with each other,” Nordstrom said. 

Nordstrom said she contacted her county commissioner after she and her children unknowingly picked up bottles containing urine.

“I was upset," Nordstrom said. "I just watched a man defecate on my property.”

Though she did not speak to District 4 County Commissioner Joe Neuder, a staff member relayed her concerns to code enforcement.

“Homeless people themselves are not a problem, the problem is the behaviors that are attached to drawing this type of social services into our residential neighborhood,” Nordstrom said.

Nordstrom expressed sympathy for people experiencing homelessness, noting that she had once been homeless herself while establishing Five-O Donut Co. She recalled sending her children to live with their father while she slept on the couch in her bakery and showered at the YMCA.

Why must Remnant Church cut back on outreach?

When code enforcement staff looked into the complaint, the agency deemed the cafe a social service facility. Social service facilities are not permitted to operate on land zoned for single-family residences.

Staff explained that the church land must be changed to commercial zoning and then a special exception must be granted for the Remnant Cafe.

Code enforcement staff also explained the process of giving notice, giving time to comply, and ultimately, a hearing with the special magistrate if the violator does not come into compliance. Staff will proceed with standard enforcement procedures moving forward.

From Nordstrom’s viewpoint, communication with code enforcement and members of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Homeless Outreach Team has not always been transparent.

Nordstrom said she was told that nothing could be done because the church had a special exception to provide those services.

A Sarasota County spokesperson told the Herald-Tribune that the process included time for Remnant Church to come into compliance, which would require hearings before both the Sarasota County Planning Commission and the Sarasota County Commission.

The alternative to going into compliance would be a code enforcement hearing before a special magistrate.

Burns said the church operated with the understanding that freedom of religion provisions of the Constitution covered that practice.

“It is part of our faith to care for the needy and homeless and the poor,” Burns said. “We have always done it under that and had no idea that we had a problem, that we were breaking any type of a code, because that’s what we’ve always been told.”

How did Remnant Church begin?

Frank and Tammy Burns moved to Sarasota about 25 years ago and started volunteering with Gifts From God, a homeless outreach founded and directed by the Rev. Mike Butterfield. It operated from 1997 to 2011.

Gifts From God ministered to the homeless on Sundays in the Gillespie Park neighborhood of downtown Sarasota.

The couple served on the board of Gifts From God.

“That was a battle too,” Burns said, and later recalled residents spreading honey on the picnic tables at Gillespie Park in an attempt to render them unusable for service.

“Working with homeless people never sets well with anybody,” she said.

From there, the couple went on to run a mobile medical ministry and eventually established Remnant Church.

From Burns’ perspective, Sarasota has not progressed far enough from 2006, when the National Coalition for the Homeless named it the meanest city in America.

“Sarasota has always, over the 25 years that I’ve been here, taken the tack of treat them poorly enough, hassle them enough, they will just leave,” Burns said. “All it has done is create a very contentious relationship between the community in Sarasota, downtown merchants, downtown homeowners.”

Members of Ashton Mennonite congregation approached the couple about sharing space at their underutilized church.

Dr. Burns visited and found what the couple believe is the ideal place to fulfill their calling, even if it is a six-mile trip from downtown.

“When he went to see it he said, ‘I found your cafe,’” Tammy Burns recalled. “It was a perfect facility because it had a big kitchen and it had a couple of showers and a big Fellowship Hall.”

Since that first service on Christmas Eve 2017, the ministry said it has thrived but the neighborhood has, in the eyes of the residents, diminished.

“What Remnant needs to understand is that there are consequences to their intentions,” Nordstrom said.

Earle Kimel primarily covers local governments in Sarasota County as well as land development and environmental issues for the Herald-Tribune. Follow him on Facebook, and X. He can be reached by email at [e-mail]. Support local journalism by subscribing.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota church cuts homeless services after violation | Exclusive