Houston pastor Joel Osteen disputed that his church—which can hold about 16,000 people—turned away evacuees during Hurricane Harvey.
“(The city) didn’t need us as shelter then,'' Osteen told Today. “If we needed to be a shelter, we certainly would’ve been a shelter right when they first asked.
“Once they filled up, they never dreamed that we'd have this many displaced people, (and) they asked us to become a shelter. I think this notion that somehow we would turn people away or we weren’t here for the city is about as false as can be.”
Osteen made the comments after heavy social media criticism on Saturday, with some people saying that he hadn’t offered the church as a shelter for people affected by the storm.
People evacuate by boat from the Hurricane Harvey floodwaters in Houston, Texas August 29, 2017. Reuters/Rick Wilking
