West Roxbury food pantry and some of its neighbors agree to try to find solution to traffic two days a month

Rose's Bounty, which has a drive-up food pantry twice a month at the Stratford Street United Church, at the corner of Stratford Street and Anawan Avenue in West Roxbury, agreed last night to try to reduce the impact on neighbors from people coming for food pickups in numbers that remain higher than before the start of the pandemic.

Many of the roughly 50 neighbors who attended a meeting at the church organized by the city Office of Neighborhood Services said they supported the idea of the food pantry and said the traffic during the two hours on the second Saturday of the month and then on the third Friday of the month was a minor price to pay for helping out fellow residents in need. Two Stratford Street residents even volunteered their driveways if that would help.

But some residents angrily denounced the traffic and the blocked driveways and the noise from the roughly 250 cars on that one Saturday and 115 cars on that one Friday that drive through the neighborhood - they say the food pantry has just become too big for the quiet area. And they said it's more than just two days a month because the program has cars coming all the time for its other programs - which include organizing home food deliveries for roughly 70 West Roxbury veterans and their familes.

One accused Rose's Bounty of breaking the law because its 2017 permit called for indoor pickup only, not today's drive-up service and urged fellow residents to follow his lead and park their vehicles by the curb instead of in their driveways as a protest - he also recently parked his van right in front of the church, although he disagreed that he did that for two weeks straight, he said it was just for three days.

Dan Hudson, the City Hall liaison to West Roxbury, however, said the food pantry doesn't need a permit for pick-up service, that Rose's Bounty is "in good standing" with both BPD and ISD. Rose's Bounty said its other programs don't mean a lot of traffic - and that people who work on them or use them have enough on-street parking in front of the church to not disrupt nearby residents' driveways.

Another resident said she's tired of outsiders clogging up the neighborhood and said she particularly resents the Black family who started yelling at her when she demanded they move away from her driveway and questioned whether she was anti-Black, which she couldn't be because "I have Black in my family!" And now with the constant pantry traffic on those two days a month and taking care of one family member with cancer and another with Alzheimer's and the pantry business she's just been turned into "a mess," to the point there was one person in the church meeting room she said she could punch, but wouldn't.

She questioned why Mayor Wu doesn't just give the food pantry a bigger building somewhere else. Others said it's time for the food pantry to send people off to other area food pantries or at the least mix up which streets participants take to get to the food pickup.

Rose's Bounty Chair Judy Jose-Roddy said the food pantry can't simply ask the city for space because it's not a city program. She also denied a rumor that the food pantry is somehow making the church rich - although the food pantry has become a key mission of the church, it is financially run independently of it - with its own accounting system and bank account.

Another resident accused Jose-Roddy of anointing herself "queen" of the neighborhood and expanding the food pantry without even asking neighbors about it, to the point where people "park in front of my house all day" and some residents' cars have even been hit.

Jose-Roddy said the food pantry began the pick-up service in response to Covid-19 - both because of the health concerns about people congregating inside to pick up food and because demand increased so dramatically - to the point the food pantry had to limit who could get food to residents of West Roxbury, Roslindale, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park and Mattapan. The program also stations volunteers on the street to try to keep the cars moving and away from driveways.

Jose-Roddy said about 55% of participants come just from West Roxbury - and 80% from West Roxbury, Roslindale and Hyde Park.

"These are local people," she said. "These are your neighbors facing food insecurity."

One of those neighbors, Lauren Havens of West Roxbury, walked to the front of the room with her daughter, Madison, who is a disabled adult who is unable to work and who relies on the food pantry to supplement her SNAP payments. Havens said she has also had to turn to the food pantry for help herself - in addition to volunteering for it - because she can no longer work full time, since she now has to help care for her daughter due to the scarcity of at-home help since the pandemic.

Havens, who looks like any other middle-aged West Roxbury woman you might see in Roche Bros., then stated the obvious: She's white. "It breaks my heart to have to say I'm white," but she's just heard too many people muttering about pantry-goers talking in Spanish and being from outside the neighborhood, when, in fact, she is far from the only person in West Roxbury who can use a helping hand, from Park Street to Centre Street and Washington Street.

"Take a look inside your heart," she asked.

Later, she also objected to the apparent idea among nearby residents that they somehow own the streets, that they should somehow determine who can drive and park on them. She was joined in that by Rev. Abigail Henrich, the church's pastor, who said when she first began at the church, she couldn't understand the angry notes people kept leaving on her car demanding she stop parking in front of their houses - in a part of West Roxbury that has no official resident-only parking spaces.

Other residents also spoke in support of the pantry and said they don't really mind the traffic a few hours a month. One Jewish woman who lives next to the church said this is all being part of a community; it's no different than the fact that "you all are parking in front of my house" for Sunday-morning services or that she can hear music during the services and that she's fine with that.

Jose-Roddy and other Rose's Bounty managers and volunteers agreed to look at steps to decrease the impact on the neighborhood.

These include possibly hiring BPD detail officers - or even just asking if E-5 can monitor the situation during regular patrols when possible, on the theory that cops are better trained to get traffic flowing smoothly than the volunteers who now try to get participants not to stop in front of people's driveways, sometimes loudly.

Also, the food pantry will try to redouble efforts to get participants to come on the one Friday a month rather than the one Saturday a month, to try to reduce the Saturday load - which sometimes sees cars backed up to West Roxbury Parkway. Jose-Roddy said volunteers have had some success getting people to come later in the day, rather than queuing up first thing in the morning.

The pantry will also work with the driver of its delivery van to see if there's a way to reduce the clanging and other noise when food pallets are lowered to the ground.

Hudson said he would try to organize a follow-up meeting.