don't mind read them off because i don't have the sheet in front of me okay calendar number
392701029 reed street is continued calendar number 39271 1526
Calendar number 39271, 1526 Manton Street is continued.
And calendar number 39269, 2236 Hancock Street is continued.
First case, calendar number is 39276, 3959 Lancaster Avenue.
The attorney is Sherman Toppin.
And I believe there's another attorney as well.
it's either david feinman or josh horvitz
i see sherman tompin joshua horvitz
yes sir okay sir do you do you agree to uh swear or affirm
oh this is what you do frank frank that's you i'm sorry do you swear or
affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you. Please
state your name and address for the record. Spell your name for the stenographer, please.
Sure. My name is Joshua Horvitz, J-O-S-H-U-A-H-O-R-V-I-T-Z of Feynman, Krekstein, and Harris.
Address is 1801 Market Street, Suite 1100, Philadelphia, PA 19103.
Sir, do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
i do but i'm not the uh appellant sorry i don't represent the appellant josh he's representing
right he's the other yes yes he is the one who filed the motion to quash okay
mr toppen yes my name is sherman toppen our office address is 1800 jfk boulevard suite 300
and I'm here on behalf of the applicant.
Mr. Toppin, do you swear for him to tell the truth,
the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Thank you.
And Toppin, for the stenographer, is spelled T as in Thomas,
O, P as in Paul, P as in Paul, I, N as in Nicholas.
Yes, that is correct.
So there is a motion being made to quash.
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
It's good to see everybody in these difficult times.
of the property as an extension of the services provided by by the ministry and as a second
coincident to that expansion of use the the second zoning variance is to proceed with that level of
use in the without providing the mandatory for parking spaces so we have a two zoning requests
which are somewhat connected and we will we'll talk more about those um we waived the reading of
the refusal, but I guess if that's all moved into record, we can begin to put on our first witness.
Our first witness will be Brian Jenkins, who is the Executive Director of Chosen 300.
I don't see him in my little readout here, but perhaps he is associated with this call.
Ms. Sunkit will figure that out for us. Give us a few seconds.
Brian Jenkins is available to speak as you wish. Okay, thank you. Before you begin, Mr. Toppin,
Mr. Jenkins. I am here, I just don't see myself. Okay, we hear you. Okay. Please state your name
and address for the son of a spell your name. Sure, my name is Reverend Brian Jenkins, B-R-I-A-N
and J-E-N-K-I-N-S. I'm an executive director and senior pastor of Chosen 300 Ministries
located at 3959 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104.
Thank you, Reverend. And do you swear and affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth? I do affirm. Thank you.
Okay. At this time, do members of the board have in front of yourselves the packet of exhibits
that we previously submitted in light for this particular for this only I don't see them if you
can share them I think is the right terminology yes okay so what I'll do is I'm I'm gonna have
to move you around here to get to it so we prior to this we emailed a packet of exhibits so that
we could walk through so that the board can see those exhibits as we're speaking I'm going to
take a few minutes to try to find that on my computer you give me a moment all
actually I found it on my phone I don't know about the other board members if
you've seen it it's in the material that sharon sent us a few minutes ago okay so should i still
um yeah it's the refusal and uh a plot a uh a plan personal care area yes all right yeah
is that sufficient for the other board members if not let me let us know it works okay thank
you so should i continue to pull up the pdf for sharing uh if you could that would i think it
would be helpful it would be helpful if you could all right all right let me go ahead and do that
i'm almost there to do let's see one second just gotta
i will also send the whole exhibit packet to the board members now
if they don't have it okay this is josh horvitz would it be possible for me to get a copy also
yes josh absolutely um what is your email address if you um it's jhorvitz at fineman
law firm.com and i'll shoot you an email now so you have okay okay i'm i was copied on that so
I'm just gonna find my paralegals.
I think she sent it.
Let me just go ahead, right here, everything.
Okay, there's the motion and then there is,
okay, here it is right here.
Downloading it.
All right, it's got a few megabytes,
so it's loading up on my screen
so I can share it just momentarily all right now I have it let me go into the
All right, and sharing.
Oh, I can now get the privilege of sharing this myself.
So I can now get the privilege of sharing this, my screen, here at the bottom.
I'm just hitting that button there.
There we go.
Share.
And here we go.
All right. It's now on my screen. Can everyone see that packet?
Sorry about the delay there. It wasn't loaded up right there. So this is our cover sheet. On the
second page, we will begin to walk through these particular exhibits. I'll stay on number one and
we'll move through them. But back to you, Mr. Jenkins, you're with us? I am. Okay, good. So
Mr. Jenkins, you've already given your name, we've already indicated. At what point did you,
at some point in the past, Chosen 300 purchase the property located at 3959 Lancaster Avenue?
Is that correct? That is correct. The property was purchased in 2010. I think we finally opened
up for operation in 2015. Okay, and Exhibit 1 that you have in your packet is the deed,
and if you scroll down, is the deed that is presented in Exhibit 1 a deed for the premises
that we're speaking about today? Indeed, yes. Okay, and at some point, at the time that you
purchased the property, what was the condition of it at the time that you purchased it?
It needed to be renovated pretty substantially. The interiors had a lot of old wiring.
We added in a second, it's called a mezzanine. It only covers half of the building above the
first floor for office space. We also renovated the downstairs, upgraded the bathrooms that were
in deplorable condition, added all new electrical work, all new plumbing, all new gas, pretty much
everything is new from the curb except one air conditioning unit and the radiators in the
basement which extend up to the first floor which have been capped off. Okay and currently as we
speak today what are the uses that occur at the property? So we do a few things. First of all
primary is we do conduct worship every Sunday morning in Bible studies as well. But our clientele
and the folks that we serve are people that are homeless and then also people that are in extreme
poverty. So you may have some people that are actually either living on the streets, living in
shelters, or possibly just falling below the poverty level, dealing with food insufficiency.
So every worship gathering, we also have a meal as well. We do hold meals here now four days a
week. In addition, we have expungement services, and that's basically where if a person has a
record, whether it's a misdemeanor or they have an ARD or an old arrest that's creating a barrier
from them getting employment. We have attorneys that come in every Monday. It's been kind of
stagnant right now because of COVID-19, of course, but they basically cleared our record
so that the idea is that they would become employable.
We have job training classes.
We also have barber care where twice a month,
barbers come in and provide free haircuts
for the folks that are homeless,
but also the entire community.
Anybody can walk in.
You don't necessarily need a homeless ID
to be able to access those services.
Very recently, we also developed a partnership
with Together Philadelphia,
which there's two representatives online from that,
and maybe you'll hear from them later.
Laura Lombardo and also Risa Walcox. But together, West Philadelphia is a consortium of organizations
including Drexel University, Penn Medicine, Mainline Health, and there's a few others. But
basically, it is designed to provide case management. And we wanted to get that in the
door first before actually starting this process of overnight care because this is indeed a personal
Well, one is really a cry from the community. There are so many people now that are homeless, and the homeless population is increasing, and the number of people that we're seeing on the streets that don't have access to a proper place to be able to stay.
but also we want to make sure that people are moving ahead and it's hard to really get a person
that is homeless to self-sufficiency if they don't have a place to lay their head but we don't want
it to be a place where people are just warehoused and anybody can just walk in with no desire to
get services or get help. The goal is to be able to provide a place where they can get personal
care. They would come in at approximately six o'clock and we have our evening meal. We have
case managers that will be there on site.
Just sorry, Mr.
You're speaking about what you
propose.
Yeah, so let me, I guess, to back
up to the hardship, the issue is that
in the community that there is
so much a desire to
get people off the street, and we have
not been able to be able to
accomplish that.
But also, it is the next
step in order to extend service
to those folks that are in need.
And it really cripples us from being able to do the calling of Christ that we have to be able to let the stranger in.
We're able to feed the stranger. We're able to clothe the naked, but we haven't been able to let the stranger in.
And that's one of the barriers within the calling of our ministry and the calling of Christ that we let the stranger in.
and that creates the hardship and prevents us from doing the ministry of Jesus Christ that he
called us to do, but also it cripples the community because it doesn't allow the community to be able
to have a safe place for people to come, but also a safe place to move forward. Now, is your ministry
funded in part in private way to render the services you've just described? Yes, so we have
private funding, but we also have public funding as well. And then once the program does start,
there will be additional funding that will be accessible to be able to satisfy that. But
we operate currently off of about a little over half a million dollars per year in providing
services to those that are in need. Okay, so part of the hardship, will any of these sources of
funding threatened or perhaps in any jeopardy if the expansion of services are not extended
to overnight stay?
Well, it takes away the credibility of the organization because when we opened this facility,
you know, our message to the community was that we would be opening up a facility to
move towards three tiers.
The first tier was, of course, to provide an effective place where people could come
in and dine and have worship that were impoverished. The second one was to provide services
that would move them towards self-sufficiency. And the third one was that we'd be able to provide
maximum of 40 occupants with rotating staff. Is the basement level of the subject premises
capable of housing, if you will, more than this 40 people?
Absolutely. The occupancy actually for the basement level is 100 persons. The area that
we're using is approximately about 1,500 square feet. So with bunk beds, you could actually have
about 60 people there with barriers and very comfortable. However, you know, we, we really
did not want to go to that level. We wanted to actually provide additional spacing where people
don't have to be kind of too close together, but we could have ample space. And so that's why we
went with the number 40, but we also want to make sure that we have the appropriate capability to
provide the personal care services that go along with this, that this is not a shelter. This is
not a warehouse for people to just come and drop in. This is a place for people to be able to get
help and to move forward. So the answer is yes, we could have asked for 60 and we could have asked
for 100. But we chose a number 40 because that's the number that we're comfortable with.
But we also want to make sure that this is a great place for people to be able to come.
And, Mr. Jenkins, one of the things that's important in a zoning proceeding is that the application request is for a more least restrictive use. Would you consider 40 individuals a least restrictive use when your capacity is, in fact, much greater than that?
Oh, absolutely.
Okay. Further down in your application, there is indication of the hours of operation along that same sentence from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the existing structure, and how will you monitor those time frames? How will it be known? How will you make sure that those time frames are maintained?
Well, first of all, our mealtime is at 6 o'clock p.m., and that's when we let, you know, the general community come in.
And you don't necessarily have to be homeless to come and get a meal at Chosen 300.
But the first introduction into the building is that you're coming in for a meal.
But then also there's case managers on site and where, one, the people that are would be registered, per se, to be able to stay in the personal care facility.
at that point, after their meal, their next step would be to go downstairs to the personal
care facility. Whether someone's interacting with them upstairs or downstairs, we are going
to make sure that, have we checked in with them to see where they are in their case management?
Sorry, there's an intake procedure. I know that you could elaborate further on that,
but there is an intake procedure for everyone coming in.
Absolutely. Did you want me to elaborate on that now?
Oh, no, that's fine. We just wanted to see how you would be able to monitor that. And as far as the 8 p.m. time when the individuals that would come in, how would the discharge procedures go?
Well, first of all, for coming in, again, they would come in during the meal, but in order to access downstairs, of course, they would have to be intaked in.
at eight o'clock, our door is pretty much locked, you know, and it's not that people can't get out
in a case of emergency, but if you're staying there, you're staying there for the night. You're
not, this is not like a go in and go out facility. If you're, if you're going to be in the program,
you're going to be in the program, you're going to stay the night. And then at six o'clock AM,
at that point would transition to where we would have some type of breakfast or meal for them.
And then by eight o'clock in the morning, the goal is that everyone would be out of the building at
that point, unless they were receiving additional services during that day, because we are going
to have additional services and counselors that will be available during the day to be able to