New Panel Won’t Back CRA Plan to Buy Mission

Asserting its new authority over the Community Redevelopment Agency, a City Council committee on Monday refused to endorse a CRA plan to pay the Union Rescue Mission $6.5 million to move out of its downtown building.

The plan, approved by CRA commissioners last Wednesday, will come before the City Council next week. The proposal’s failure to win a committee endorsement makes the prospects for approval unclear.

The strongest opposition came from Councilwoman Gloria Molina, chairwoman of the recently created Community Redevelopment and Housing Committee, who complained Monday that the CRA was attempting to rush the plan through and had not provided the council with enough information about the deal.

“I’m willing to vote against it,” Molina said. “I think the CRA’s going to have to recognize our responsibility of oversight.”

The committee voted 2-1 to send the matter to the full council without a recommendation, with Molina voting against the CRA plan.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said Monday he had “a lot of unanswered questions” about the mission, including whether the city could legally pay $6.5 million to an organization that refuses to hire non-Christians.

“We’ll have it out on the floor of the council,” Yaroslavsky said.

Mission representatives said Monday they have no intention of changing their policy of hiring only Christians, even if it means jeopardizing the deal.

“We have a right to hire people of similar beliefs,” George Caywood, the mission’s executive director, said after the meeting. The privately funded mission employs about 160 people, all of them Christians, at five facilities, but there are no religious requirements for the homeless men the mission serves, he said.

“No one has to sit through any kind of religious services to get a meal at the mission,” Caywood said.

The 98-year-old nondenominational Protestant mission, which houses about 800 homeless men each night, is the oldest and largest mission in the downtown area.

It is considered a blight by redevelopment officials who want to refurbish Main Street along with the rest of the downtown business district.