Curtis Viator, director of Shepherd’s Food Pantry, has known for more than a year that the day would soon come when the program would be homeless.

The pantry accepts applications every Wednesday, Viator said and supplies 300 local families with groceries several times per month.

It has been housed, rent-free, in the Iberia Parish-owned Jacquemond Funeral Home building on Iberia Street for a couple of years, Viator said, an agreement reached by volunteers and former Iberia Parish President Will Langlinais.

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Viator said the pantry’s board of directors offered to pay rent and utilities on the space, but Langlinais always refused because of the work being done there.

When the new parish administration took over in 2008, Viator said there was a bit of “hemming and hawing” about the pantry utilizing the space without paying anything for it. The attitude quickly changed when Parish President Ernest Freyou toured the facility and also saw the good being done there Viator said.

“At first he asked that we start paying utilities, but, when he took a look around he decided to keep things as they were,” Viator said.

The building was deemed surplus property by the Parish Council and was put out for bid, to be moved, to make room for future plans to provide more parking for the Iberia Parish Courthouse.  Viator said the pantry’s board of directors offered to buy the building for $100,000 and claimed Freyou was ecstatic with the offer.

“We went to the meeting and all of the sudden the Parish Council didn’t want to sell it anymore,” Viator said. “None of them could really give us an answer why.”

Parish Chief Administrative Officer Sally Angers said the offer was refused because the council did not want the building to remain there and instead advertised for its purchase contingent on it being moved.

“The council would have accepted his offer had he been willing to move it,” Angers said. “But that’s not what his offer represented.”

The council and administration have taken steps this month to have the building demolished to make room for new parking space, and Viator expects word that the pantry needs to move “any day now.”

“They still haven’t called us to tell us anything,” Viator said. “I hope they don’t just come tomorrow and tell us to get out.”

The pantry’s board has been putting out feelers in the community searching for a temporary home when the order finally does come.

It purchased property in recent years on Jane and North streets, where it intended on building a brand new facility. Still short on money to make that vision materialize, pantry volunteers were hoping for one more year in their current location. Viator said he was confident in that time the board would have the money to begin new construction.

“The parish has been good to us,” Viator said. “And, even though it’s coming to this, I think it will work out for the better.”

Viator said he is hopeful someone in the community might have a vacant building the pantry could use in the interim.

What does puzzle Viator, he said, is why the Parish Council wants to tear down two solid structures — the Jacquemond building and the Breaux building on the corner of Iberia and Pershing streets.

“I know they are planning for the future,” Viator said. “Those are both good structures. They just need some work. They seem to have plenty of land around the courthouse that they could make parking out of, and if by building some of these new buildings they are talking about and moving entities out, wouldn’t that free up even more parking that is already there?”

Angers said when the parish purchased the Jacquemond building the plan was always to move it and utilize the lot for courthouse parking.

She also said the majority of the parking taken up at the courthouse is by the court system and the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, two tenants that will stay put.

Viator said he is unsure where the pantry will be in a month’s time, but his strong faith makes him confident all will work out in the end, and the 300 families the pantry serves every month will continue to be helped.