Dover City Victory Church in the hot seat again

Alexis is 21 years old, pregnant, blind and homeless. Last Friday, Victory Church in Dover bought a camper and placed it in the back of the church for Alexis, her daughter, and mother to live in. By Tuesday morning Kent County placed a notice in the front of the church stating a fine of one hundred dollars would be administered for every day that they housed a homeless person on their property.

“Part of our religious belief and faith is to help the poor they’re punishing us for doing what we feel we’re commanded to to according to our faith,” said Pastor Aaron Appling.

Kent County says that since the church is providing a camper, which is harboring  residents. it would need to be zoned as a commercial recreational campground.
But the church does not have that zoning approval.  It’s not the first time Victory Church has heard this. They’ve been in the hot seat for months over “Tiny Homes” which are single unit mobile apartments that the church built to house the homeless. These tiny homes and the overall mission to house homeless in the church is not something the surrounding neighbors are happy about.

“These people haven’t told the truth about anything since they started,” said neighbor, Tom Flanigan.

Flanigan lives right next door to the church and he tells us he was broken into twice and alleges some of the homeless people may have been involved. Since then, he’s invested in five thousand dollars worth of surveillance cameras surrounding his property. Flanigan believes Pastor Aaron Appling and the church should have to follow zoning and county laws just as everyone else does.

“The county gave them every opportunity to make things right and he didn’t do it. And now he’s complaining because they are finally putting their foot down,” said Flanigan.

Pastor Appling, church members, and some of Dover’s homeless population will attend the City Council meeting on Monday hoping to clear up these issues.

“There was some confusion about what they thought was going on and what actually was going on. so our hope is that the county will back off because they were wrong,” said Pastor Appling. “And that the county will realize we don’t have a campground here we have one RV with one family in it.”