Tagged: New Life Evangelistic Center

A local church is taking a more low-key approach in its struggle with city officials to set up a homeless camp in St. Louis. 

Rev. Larry Rice of the New Life Evangelistic Center was arrested last week as he attempted to open a tent city called Integrity Village on a two-acre plot of private land at Vendeventer Ave. north of Interstate 44. City officials cleared the site and condemned the area as a health hazard. But Rice's son, Rev. Chris Rice, says they aren’t giving up.

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slays says Rev. Larry Rice’s plan to host a homeless camp on Vandeventer Ave.  north of Interstate 44 is a bad idea. 

Speaking today on "St. Louis on the Air," Slay said he’s concerned about the same safety and health problems that plagued the tent cities by the Mississippi riverfront.

“If they’re on the property without the proper permits – the occupancy permits and other things under the zoning laws – they will be asked to leave and if they continue to violate the law people will be moved,” he said.

The parents of 21-year-old Jeremy Dunlap say that there was not ample protection at the New Life Evangelistic Center to prevent their son's stabbing death in 2008. Tammy Church and Eric Dunlap filed separate wrongful death suits against the center today in St. Louis Circuit Court, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Though both lawsuits involve wrongful death, the specifics of each are slightly different.