Schlude say police have limited options for calls about homelessness; RATI director points at City Council for ‘lack of action’
Mitchell Kaminski
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Following calls from University of Missouri System President Mun Choi to address homelessness in downtown Columbia, police say their options remain limited.
At a September press conference, Choi urged city leaders to consider a loitering ordinance and take steps to “clean up encampments” and tackle homelessness.
Columbia Police Chief Jill Schlude said during a meeting on Wednesday that most of the department’s calls related to homelessness are for trespassing.
“I think it’s important for people to understand that the police department, we’re not policing housing status, we’re policing behavior,” Schlude said during a “Let’s Talk Local” event at Missouri United Methodist Church. “So we’re responding to what people are doing that is not within the law, and just the way the world is right now, we get called to handle a lot of things that really aren’t things that we handle. So mental health issues, addiction issues, things of that nature.”
Schlude said roughly 86% of the calls police receive about the unhoused are for trespassing. She added that officers are often left with few options when responding to mental health or substance abuse calls.
“Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of options for mental health care,” Schlude said. “We can take them to MUPC, their bed space is extremely limited. We do have some resources over at Burrell. They have a 24-hour facility now, but a lot of that requires voluntary [action]. So people have to be voluntary. We can’t force people to go into treatment.”
She added the city is not trying to criminalize homelessness, but rather address behaviors that break the law or cause concern. City Manager De’Carlon Seewood said the city has also seen inconsistencies in how businesses respond to the unhoused population and is working with business leaders to create more uniform downtown policies.
The city is also asking local businesses to sign “letters of enforcement” allowing police to act on trespassing issues.
“I’m in no way dissuading people from calling, but if someone calls and says ‘There’s a man standing in the middle of the street talking to himself, yelling. Talking to people that aren’t there.’ That’s concerning to people right? At the end of the day, if there’s no law violation, our options are very limited,” Schlude said.
John Trapp, executive director of Room at the Inn, says there is no solution to the problem except adding more affordable housing, an issue that he says would still take more than a decade to “dig out of the hole we are currently in” when it comes to the housing crisis.
Trapp added that part of the issue is a lack of action from city leaders, saying the City Council is “willing to do anything except play around the edges.”
According to Trapp, “NIMBYs,” also known as people who hold the belief of “not in my back yard” hold inordinate power and “we do not have a council willing to stand up to them.”
“We have a housing problem. And until we address that, we’re not going to make any headway addressing the homeless problem,” Trapp told ABC 17 News. “Property owners are the ones who vote. Nobody wants apartments in their neighborhood, and nobody wants cheap houses built to bring down their property values. So they are opposed to any new developments with them.”
Trapp said the city and local organizations are offering more services than ever before, but demand continues to outpace resources.
Trapp believes the Opportunity Campus, which is scheduled to open in June 2026, will help alleviate some of the strain. However, he says, if the problem continues to be ignored, the Opportunity Campus will quickly outpace the increased capacity.
Trapp said addressing zoning and regulatory barriers is key to building more affordable housing.
“We need to reassess all of our zoning, make it easier to build, and we need to decrease regulations to make building cheaper,” he said. “Regulations drive up the cost of development. If a developer can’t make a profit on an affordable house or apartment, they’re not going to build one. They’re going to build McMansions because there’s profit to be had.”
Trapp also said the biggest reason for the increase in homelessness in the city dates back over a decade.
“We had a housing bubble in 2008, and when it popped, investors bought up all the houses,” Trapp said. “The price of housing didn’t come down because large investment companies bought the houses instead and raised rents.”