Members of a California church say local government officials asked them to stop serving food to the homeless — but the city has so far refused to give any reasonable explanation as to why.

Since 2014, United Methodist Church in Malibu has served home-cooked meals to anywhere from 70-100 homeless people every Wednesday, KCBS-TV in Los Angeles reported. After this Thanksgiving holiday, those people might have to rummage through the garbage instead.

“Very succinctly, they claimed we are increasing homelessness,” Dawn Randall with United Methodist Church in Malibu said the city told the church.

The city of Malibu did not respond to the KCBS-TV’s request for comment when asked why exactly these well-intentioned people of faith were asked to stop serving the less fortunate.

This is the city’s official reason for asking the church not to feed the homeless but it’s not a viable explanation at all. If feeding the homeless population only increases the number of individuals living on the streets, the local government in Malibu owes the church an explanation as to why that is the case. The claim needs to be backed up with actual data and facts, not a mere claim.

“We can’t pretend like [homelessness] doesn’t exist in our backyard. We can’t pretend that it only exists outside Malibu,” Kay Gabbard with the United Methodist Church told KCBS-TV.