Haley Swaino
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
A new $18.6 million facility built to support people experiencing hardship and homelessness is set to open its doors in Columbia in late July.
Construction on the Voluntary Action Center’s Opportunity Campus began in February 2024. Ahead of its opening, members of the public are invited to an open house Thursday to tour the resource center and shelter.
According to Columbia’s 2025 State of Homelessness Report, 309 people experienced homelessness last year. The city’s homeless population has hovered around the 300 mark for at least three years, with 323 reported in 2024 and 270 in 2023. The report was not done during the pandemic from 2020-22.
Services will be provided to more than 7,000 people a year through the over 30,000-square-foot shelter facility, according to local nonprofit VAC. It will include 150 beds, an overflow bed area with private rooms for sick individuals, a commercial kitchen and dining room area, showers and more.
VAC Executive Director Ed Stansberry said the sleeping area will typically split into six sections each night.
“Our vision is that we’ll have pet owners in one section. We do accept pets. We’ll have veterans in an area because they have a certain set of needs about situational awareness. And if there’s PTSD involved, we need to be sensitive to that. An area for loud snorers or sleep talkers, men, women. And then we also know that there’s a significant portion of the unsheltered population that is on the autism spectrum,” Stansberry said. “Many times an environment like this is just way too much stimulus. So one of the areas will be like a sensory deprivation area where we might give them a little cocoon around their bed and maybe some different lighting or sound machines or aroma.”
The Opportunity Campus is made up of two buildings— the Cindy Mustard Resource Center and The Hub. The campus brings together local resources with Waypoint Shelter beds, Campus Companions kennels and the New Day Columbia day center (formerly Turning Point). Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen will also provide dinner service.
“Room at the Inn as of January 1 dissolved,” Stansberry said. “We absorbed their employees and have been running the Ashley Street overnight shelter.”
Once the Opportunity Campus officially opens, he said the shelter on Ashley Street in Columbia will start to close.
While most Missouri shelters turn away pets, Stansberry said that might make more potential visitors open to coming to the Opportunity Campus.
The facility will offer a veterinary exam area, pet washing station, indoor/outdoor kennel runs and more.
“So if the fur baby needs a bath, or if they need a flea bath, or if they need a rabies shot, or if they have a minor wound care, we can do that here for them,” Stansberry said.
People will also have access to an on-site medical center run by Centerstone, formerly Burrell.
“That will provide primary care as well as mental health and substance abuse treatment,” Standberry said.
He said Centerstone is on its way to becoming a federally qualified health clinic, which allows them to have a sliding scale of fees based on their patients income— and also subsidizes them.
“When they go for health care, They tend to go to the emergency room, the most expensive place to access our health care system,” Stansberry said.
The Opportunity Campus will offer more ADA accessible showers than are currently available across Columbia shelters.
“We greatly expanded the number of showers that are available to our unsheltered neighbors,” Stansberry said. “Ashley Street [formerly Room at the Inn shelter] right now has two showers and Wilkes Boulevard United Methodist Church [formerly Turning Point shelter] has two showers. So you can imagine the logistical nightmare that it is with two showers to get 150 people through the shower. You can’t do it.”
The shelter also houses mail delivery and laundry services and provides computer access and secure storage spaces.
“One of the misconceptions is that folks who live in shelter don’t have jobs,” Stansberry said. “That’s not true. A lot of them get up and go to work in the morning. And so it’s important for them to have their clothes clean and also to be showered.”
VAC believes the Opportunity Campus will transform the Boone County community.
“The communities that are most successful at addressing homelessness have a radical level of collaboration. And I think that’s what we’ve set ourselves up with here,” Stansberry said. “Our homeless neighbors tend to get covered by a blanket. You know, they’re all this or they’re all that. And that’s just not true. They’re each individuals just like we are. And they each have their own story. All of them have suffered some level of trauma, even just living on the streets is a certain level of trauma.”
The VAC Opportunity Campus is located in the 1300 block of Bowling Street in Columbia.
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Courtesy: Arizona Western College
The damaged bus stop structure in front of the El Paso Zoo.(Courtesy: KVIA)
