Columbia’s War on Poverty: Fighting the cold – Columbia Daily Tribune

Major Curtiss Hartley| Columbia Daily Tribune

Sitting down to write this column, it is 12 degrees at lunch time in Columbia. So that means it will likely get a little warmer over the course of the day and then we are in for a cold, cold night. My smart phone tells me it should get down to about seven degrees.

Man, that is pretty cold. Thank goodness I am inside!

Sadly, not everyone is inside right now. Not everyone will be inside tonight.

Warm space to offer shelter to our neighbors facing homelessness is at a premium every Columbia winter. Night at the Inn is a wonderful community organization that basically only functions during the winter, out of various community churches, offering warm beds to as many as they can. John Trapp is one of Columbias leading advocates for those facing homelessness and he leads the board there.

Just this week it was in the news that temporary warming centers have been opened both by the City of Columbia and The Salvation Army. The city has put cots at Wabash bus station for weekend nights and we are adding as many as we can find at The Salvation Army Harbor House (our shelter for people facing homelesssness, pretty full year-round). Believe it or not, it can be hard to find enough cots to put out for this kind of thing!

Welcome Home (focused on veterans) and St. Francis House are the two other big options, and we are so lucky to have them. Yes, it is going to be a tough winter, with nowhere near enough community resources to meet the need.

Smack in the middle of tough times, here is a story that warms my heart that you might enjoy.

Just yesterday, we heard from one of our supporters here at The Salvation Army who has befriended and is trying to help a man who has been living unsheltered. What is his story? He hit hard times several years ago when he had an accident, was prescribed opiate-based painkillers (percocet), and got addicted (other than that he had not had problems with drugs or alcohol).

Fast forward and it has been five years since the gentleman got himself off of the percocet and he has been trying to get back on track. He moved to Columbia because he had been promised a job at a new restaurant an offer that quickly disappeared as COVID hit and the restaurant never opened. Our unsheltered friend has been struggling ever since.

Today, with nothing but a good heart and a story that might have happened to many of us, this fellow has just himself and the assistance of one person. For her part, she is helping him here and there where she can, including putting him up in one of our finest local, budget hotels (warm, dry, safe, and even with cable). We are hoping we can get him into The Salvation Army Harbor House as a resident, working toward his own job and housing.

So, that is the big deal for now. Certainly, this is always true, but for the next two months or so, we really should consider focusing our charitable impulses on issues of living and dying. When you consider where to give your time; when you consider where to give your money; there are so many great causes, but with the extreme cold there is extra urgency. Please, find a way to give time and money to organizations that help fight the cold.

One person can make a difference. Working together, we can make an even bigger one.

Major Curtiss Hartley is a leader of The Salvation Army in Mid-Missouri, with facilities in Columbia and Jefferson City. The Salvation Army provides a wide range of community services to address poverty and other issues, seeking to rebuild lives and create lasting change.

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Columbia's War on Poverty: Fighting the cold - Columbia Daily Tribune