Columbia City Council discusses homeless transportation program
Marie Moyer
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Columbia City Council is looking into creating a new homeless transportation program following Monday night’s council meeting.
The idea was posed by Ward 4 Councilman Nick Foster in March when he requested a report from the Department of Public Health and Human Services exploring a possible “ride home program.”
Presented on Monday, the report breaks down how the program would impact the city and its social service providers, and what resources it would need to run.
“Overwhelmingly, we heard that there is a need for this type of assistance and there are very limited-to-no resources currently available,” Rebecca Roesslet, director of the Columbia/Boone County Public Health and Human Services, said during the meeting.
According to Roesslet and Columbia Police Chief Jill Schlude, the cause of people from outside of town becoming homeless is mainly caused by people being sent into town for medical and legal reasons or being arrested across county lines.
“The Boone County Jail can really benefit from this as well,” Schlude said. “They have a lot of folks, if you get arrested on an out-of-count warrant, and you bond out from the jail, you might not have a way to get back to Montgomery City or Sedalia, or wherever it is, and so they have people on a regular basis asking their staff, ‘I don’t have anyone to come get me,’ a bondsman is not going to come drive them to Mexico.”
The project is based on a policy from the city of Lawrence, Kansas. That city’s homeless solutions division reaches out to contacts provided by the homeless person to get the person back to their place of origin.
The people being moved are given temporary housing for three days as travel is organized. The city verifies that there is someone or a local shelter at the place of origin before a ticket is purchased. A team will also follow up with the person to make sure they arrived.
“The policy has been extremely helpful to preserve our resources that we do have that are pretty limited and to really focus and single in on the actual Douglas County residents,” Lawrence Homeless Solutions Division Director Misty Bosch-Hastings said. “We can do some verification and then give them that bus ticket, $78 to get them to their home, compared to a $30 a night in a bed here, with them having to rebuild a life just doesn’t make sense.”
Bosch-Hastings added the Missouri State Highway Patrol often brings people who break down on the highway to the nearest city, with the Homeless Solutions Division being the only way for people to get home.
Bosch-Hastings reports the division bought around 75 tickets in 2024.
Columbia Room At The Inn Director John Trapp said the shelter has been giving out bus tickets since the group’s creation. RATI similarly has to confirm that the person has a place to go, but they also add that people who use a bus ticket are restricted from returning to the shelter for six months.
Trapp adds that nonlocal homeless people are becoming more common, and the program would be a good idea for the city to join.
“A lot of folks come from out of county and go to MUPC (Missouri Psychiatric Center), then are released to the streets, many of them are just trying to get back home, that’s probably the most common thing,” Trapp said.
The City Council memo predicts tickets would range in cost from $30-$300. Roesslet also suggested tapping into $300,000 of the city’s remaining ARPA funds to begin a year-long pilot program for the project. Columbia Mayor Barbara Buffaloe added that the pilot program’s findings may also be used to get federal funding for an established project.
The Columbia City Council plans to review possible funding and coordinate with the funding departments before a project is created. A date for this update has not been set.