Homeless man’s string of legal problems should have been prevented

David Webber, Columbia MISSOURAIN, March 23, 2024

Since last summer, I’ve been interacting often with Justin Trim, a 33-year-old local homeless man recently charged with stabbing a man downtown.

It’s a sad story that might have been prevented if our legal, social, health and education institutions were different.

Last July, a local group posted on social media that Justin had been released from a hospital and needed food he could consume through a straw. He had been involved in an altercation and was kicked in the head, requiring an operation on his jaw. A Good Samaritan put him up for a few nights at a low-cost hotel, after which two guys let him stay in their room. I delivered protein drinks and bananas to him several times and drove him to the Food Bank. I asked about his income and housing situation and arranged an appointment for him at Love Columbia, but he failed to show up.

Previously, Justin had lost his disability benefits because his identity was stolen. He had a trespassing change for sleeping in a vacant house a year ago.

Justin has nothing. No money, no identification, no disability benefits. As I slowly learned, he really does have nothing — no parents, no siblings, no girlfriend, no driver’s license, no car, no bike, no job, no place to go, no hobbies, no responsibilities, no favorite chair, nothing. It is hard to imagine having nothing.

I have known Justin for about six years from Room at the Inn and Loaves and Fishes and knew that a childhood stroke left him disabled on his right side. He walks with a severe limp and can’t use his right arm to eat or to defend himself. Unfortunately, he is not able to control his mouth. He has no filter, and that gets him in trouble with other homeless guys and people in authority. He is rather resilient; he can be charming; he has a good memory of his past; he never sought my pity. He thanked me when I helped him out. He reminded me of a 13-year-old boy. Justin would be easy prey due his disabilities, his uncontrollable mouth, his desire for social interaction and his insecurities.

On Oct. 12, Justin was arrested for cashing four checks worth $17,000 in Cole County and was incarcerated there with a $10,000 cash-only bail. When I could find no one who had contact with him, I drove to the Cole County Jail. He was in a solo cell “for his own protection” given his disabilities. I talked with him by phone several times, but mostly through instant messages. I tried to explain the legal process as I understood it. His stay was longer than it should have been because there was a misunderstanding about whether he had talked to a caseworker — he thought he had; the judge had no record that he did. It turns out that there are “public defender caseworkers” and “court caseworkers.” It was just one of several misunderstandings compounded by Justin’s disability.

On Dec.6, he was released; I picked him up at the jail and brought him to Columbia. We talked the whole way.

Driving home, I learned he graduated from a Ritenour High School in St. Louis and attended community college for three semesters. He has been robbed several times and lost a lot of electrical equipment that was a source of some income. He had some involvement with foster care. His father, a stepfather, his mother, and a girlfriend died in the past 10 years. He has two uncles, or perhaps step-uncles, one of whom I met, who will have nothing to do with him.

I accompanied Justin to a meeting with his public defender on Jan. 2. The attorney did an excellent job of insisting that he stay focused on the felony charge and suggested a possible plea bargain that would keep him out of jail but require supervised probation. A hearing was set for a few weeks later but was postponed until the end of March. At the beginning of March, the hearing was continued again, without his knowledge, until May because of a public defenders’ meeting.

Since Dec. 6, Justin was staying at Room at the Inn or on the streets. He made some progress with caseworkers to obtain identification and apply for disability benefits and a housing voucher. On March 13 he was arrested for stabbing someone in downtown Columbia. He is being held at Boone County jail without bail for armed criminal action and first-degree assault. He is in a peck of trouble.

The week before his arrest he told me he was set to receive a housing voucher but did not yet know of any housing options. I asked him how he would care for himself, and he thought he was eligible for a personal assistant and could use the OATS van for transportation. Now it’s likely Justin won’t be receiving disability benefits but will get “three hots and a cot” for several years in our correction system — costing society on an average of $34,000 a year.

I am disappointed and frustrated that no one, no organization or government program, was successful in changing the life trajectory fate dealt him. His family life was never stable, he suffered medical disabilities at the age of 12, he did not achieve a stable job. I know the public defender system is overloaded but it was moving at a slow pace, as it does for other homeless cases I have observed.

Room at the Inn and related homeless services gave him a cot out of the cold and some food, both of which are essential, but did not sufficiently assist him in obtaining permanent improvement in his life — one where he would achieve some independence and control or a sense of achievement, one where he had “pride in his past, and hope for the future.”

David Webber joined the MU Political Science Department in 1986 and wrote his first column for the Missourian in 1994.

Those helping take care of people in need should be nurtured

David Webber, January 27, 2024

“Many people would do more social good, if they knew how to do it.” So my mother said back in the 1960s. About 60 years later, I’m thinking she was, and is, right. My hunch is that for every person, stereotypically a man, who yells “Get a job” to a panhandler from inside his secure, protected vehicle, there are a dozen people who would share a meal, provide extra clothes, give a ride, even share a spare bedroom if they could connect and make it work smoothly and safely. Some of them probably volunteer around town, but others would be more involved if they knew how to make it happen

Over the past four years, I’ve distributed Bombas socks, it will be 74,000 pairs by the end of 2024, to low-income and homeless organizations and individuals in mid-Missouri. I mostly distributed the socks through government and nonprofit organizations, but I posted on a local Facebook group that I could provide some socks to anyone who had a way to distribute them to the intended users —“the needy” as my mother would have called them. I was generous but a good steward of the socks so I engaged the sock recipients in conversation.

I particularly remember five women who contacted me last year. One ran a second-hand shop out of her garage on the outskirts of Columbia. When I delivered socks to her, I noticed she didn’t appear all that prosperous. One woman simply took them to her church, which had an “extra clothes” room. I met a third in front of Walmart who said she stopped her old car in public parking and offered clothing out of her trunk. It was a rather old trunk.

One woman told me, “I just know lots of people who need them.” I gave her 75 pairs. I delivered some to a another woman in the Columbia Public Library parking lot who told me how seeing how I distributed socks reinvigorated her and caused her to re-establish her Christmas gift giving to families staying at Welcome Inn and other local low cost hotels. I didn’t see that coming.

Over the past three years, I’ve learned of several women who have gone far beyond distributing socks and actually housed families with children and adult men at their own expense without the support of government or nonprofit organizations. Yes, all of the caregivers I know of are women. I’ve noticed that women volunteers at Loaves and Fishes and Room at the Inn are more frequent than men — but that’s a topic for another column.

I learned of a woman who allowed a unhoused man to stay in her house, intending it would be a few days. She helped him get identification, took her to job interviews and cared for his dog. She was surprised as he slowly took over her kitchen and electronics with no signs of his moving out. Apparently, she never felt her physical safety was at risk but she eventually asked for help to see that he moved out.

Another woman told me she has housed several different men at different times on a neighboring lot on the outskirts of Columbia, encouraging them to do small tasks and gardening. My sense is that she has mixed feelings about her caregiving efforts. She learned that many homeless men have legal, physical and mental issues about which she could do little.

Somewhat similarly, a different woman told me she provided pet food to several homeless men but she ultimately felt unappreciated without seeing much change in their situations. In both cases, these women seemed to have established boundaries due to their physical situations.

Several women have provided short-term shelter to families needing help due to domestic instability, housing problems and job loss. They see themselves as stopgap caregivers, providing help until more permanent housing and assistance can be obtained.

Perhaps the longest ongoing “success” story I am aware is a woman who responded to an anonymous posting on a local Facebook group by a woman on the brink of being evicted from a hotel because of complaints about unruly children who had many disabilities. The potential caregiver responded after realizing that her four bed, threebath house was largely unused because of her two jobs and it needed physical maintenance. It’s been more than a year and a half and the family is still with her, paying a small rent, but more importantly helping her care for the house, too. The caregiver reports that the children have blossomed with stable living, a backyard, and a third person, almost a grandmother, with whom to interact. She wrote, “I am a conservative and so frustrated with the homeless situation in this town. I do feel society just throws money at the problem without bringing any real tangible solutions. The number of people begging for help to find decent housing is terrible. I just think we can’t be the only ones in the situation we both were in, who could benefit from similar solutions …”

What all these caregivers seem to have in common, beyond their compassion, is their belief that society needs to do more and to better —but not necessarily more of what we are currently doing. As I have learned from talking with homeless adults who won’t go to shelters and observing college students at risk, many people don’t do well in institutional settings with well-intended caseworkers structuring their lives.

Columbia has many organizations, such as Love Columbia and the United Way, addressing the needs of families who know how to navigate their processes and have the time and temperament to obtain the services they need. There are lots of potential caregivers and care receivers who would mutually benefit helping one another. There are, of course, the potential obstacles of physical boundaries, clear understanding of the arrangements, any rental agreement and any potential liability. Columbia should find a way to assist and educate more potential caregivers.

David Webber joined the MU Political Science Department in 1986 and wrote his first column for the Missourian in 1994.

People like ‘Demon Copperheads’ are easy to find right here in Columbia

David Webber, January 5, 2024

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel “Demon Copperhead” caught my attention about a year ago, but I didn’t get to reading it till last month. Perhaps it was the unique names of the author and the main character that first caught my attention.

“Demon Copperhead” is a retelling of Charles Dicken’s classic “David Copperfield” in the context of Appalachia’s struggle with poverty and opioid addictions. Having taught at West Virginia University from 1982 to 1986, I am familiar with how absentee money exploited the resources and people of the region for a century and how in the past two decades Big Pharma flooded it with addictive pain killers.

I seldom read fiction. I’m not bragging, I’m acknowledging a shortcoming. I prefer the clarity of economics and history to remembering all those characters and twists and turns. Nonetheless, I decided to attempt the 548-page novel when I read how Kingsolver mirrored “David Copperfield” after having an imaginary conversation with Charles Dickens, who advised her to “let the boy tell the story.” Corny, but it captured my attention.

Kingsolver is a well-accomplished writer. She received a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year and, of course, was an Oprah Book Club selection.

Demon Copperhead is the main character and narrator who recounts his life born into Appalachia without privilege or good fortune. He never had a chance. The first sentence of the book is: “First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they’ve always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let’s just say out of it.”

So it was that Copperhead was born to a single, drug-addicted mother on the floor of the kitchen of a trailer home; his father had died of a mysterious heart attack before Demon’s birth. The only encouragement I felt to keep on reading was that Demon was the narrator — so if he made it through the whole book, he must have some good fortune.

Kingsolver recounts Demon’s struggles with a nearly helpless mother, an unaccepting stepfather, the uncaring foster care system, a decade of opioid drug addiction initiated with a medical industry new pain-reducing panacea to cope with recovery from a high school football injury. Demon’s one positive twist of fate is that he escapes into Marvel superheroes that sharpened his drawing skills and eventually allow him to earn some money as a cartoonist.

Kingsolver can flawlessly do a teenage boy becoming a young man. From what I’ve read, and learned on YouTube, a reader more literate than I would appreciate Kingsolver’s clever twists of the dozens of characters’ names and experiences that parallel Dickens. I will just applaud her mastery of teenage boys’ and young men’s language, attitudes and experiences.

Three big themes will stick with me. First, how our lives are shaped, if not determined, by fate and the unfairness of it all. Demon, whose formal name was Damon Fields, but got the nickname due his red hair, was born into the Appalachian mountains of southern Virginia with its tobacco and coal economy. The only fairness of it is that none of us chose our parents, birth year or birthplace. Some of us are dealt a good hand, some of us aren’t.

American public policy has thrown a few crumbs for economic and social development into Appalachia where 25 million people are trapped, left behind, or chose to stay.

A second theme Kingsolver reveals, chapter after chapter, is that once life is headed downhill, it just keeps on going. The child of a mother with a substance use disorder is rewarded with low-quality housing, schooling, foster care, job opportunities, peer examples, role models and more parental and family poor choices. Trauma is often and consistent. It’s usually hard to tell the difference between good luck and personal resilience among survivors of misfortune.

Third, there are big policy and societal failures and small policy and societal failures throughout Appalachia. Perhaps the highest order is absentee land ownership of coal and land resources that have allowed exploitation and environmental destruction. Next to that would be the historical political manipulation that has allowed the political system to tolerate, and even encouraged, abuse of local citizens for political and economic gain.

I know, I know: Some people look at mountain top removing (strip mining), acid polluted streams and black lung disease and see the free exchange of resources and labor for pay; other people see social injustice. There are everyday policy failures, too, with poorly implemented foster and hospital care.

“Demon Copperhead” deals with dark topics, but I found the book engaging and inspiring: How is it that Demon can take such a kicking and keep on ticking? Moreover, Kingsolver captures the caring community often found in impoverished towns and neighborhoods. Demon is benefited by a caring grandmotherly neighbor and a long-term football coach who sees mutual benefit in helping Demon’s living situation as Demon helps the school’s football performance.

I’ve met several Demon Copperheads on the streets of Columbia. Men and women born into drugs, poverty, family dysfunction and social instability, followed by unsatisfactory schooling, quite often physical and sexual abuse, a health problem or two and some encounters with the criminal justice system.

On a personal, individual level it is not hard to treat them with kindness and respect; on a policy and societal level it is hard to know how “to solve” the problem. Like Demon, local homeless folks have experienced a wide variety of societal and institutional failures, all of which need to be fixed to reduce the incidence of homelessness America is facing.

Demon is able to complete the task of narrating his own story through the miracle of his indomitable human spirit and getting a small lucky break here and there. Whether this conclusion is a mean false or not depends on the reader, I suppose. Kingsolver left me clinging to that hope but knowing that the odds are too often long.

David Webber joined the MU Political Science Department in 1986 and wrote his first column for the Missourian in 1994.

Course on homelesness offers ideas and hope

David Webber, Columbia MISSOURIAN, December 15, 2023

This fall semester, and in fall 2022, I offered an MU Honors College class on “Homelessness in America.” Because I have taught Asian government officials in the MU Asian Affairs program since I retired in 2013, I was a little apprehensive, yet eager, to teach Mizzou undergraduates again.

I was challenged by creating a course on homelessness, a wide-ranging topic about which I am unaware of similar courses, and I was curious about current undergraduate students who are often portrayed as unread, addicted to social media and unable to write more than 100 characters.

More than half the class were hard science majors, about a quarter were in public health, and only a few in political science and journalism, my more familiar draw. Fourteen of 18 students were women, a bit higher ratio than other Honors courses.

I am an interactive instructor fundamentally because I am interested in how other people think about a topic. I aim to get every student involved in class discussions and aspire to fit their contributions into the flow of the course. I remember every student’s name and often I recall what they have said in previous classes, reminding them at pivotal times.

Compared with last year’s syllabus, I decided to include less political science, e.g. federalism, role of government and public opinion surveys, and more common-sense analysis and personal experiences of homelessness using videos and an experienced caseworker’s book. Additionally, rather than merely suggest students visit a local homeless shelter, I made visiting Harbor House a class outing. Furthermore, rather than reviewing the assigned reading I required every student to review a chapter in one of the two required books

The most notable feature of the semester, however, was the learning benefits of what may be my original contribution to pedagogy: the missed class essay. In about 2000, I lost interest in bickering with students about “excused absences” for “official university activities” such as athletics, band and conferences as well as “family emergencies” and grandparent funerals.

Somehow, I came up with the “missed class essay” where students lose 10 points for any class absence but can restore them by posting a class-relevant essay on the class cyber bulletin board for each absence — no questions asked. While it worked well in previous semesters, this homelessness class gets the gold medal.

Their missed class essays, exactly 48 of them, were well done, interesting and often well-tailored to the student’s interest. One student missed 12 classes because of family reasons and travel time, and another missed nine, evidently because of lab work for his major interest. They both probably learned more by writing the missed class essays than if they had attended class. The remaining 16 students wrote 27 missed class essays — fewer than two classes each. Four didn’t miss any. I sensed no resentment to the “missed class essay.” Several times I referred to a specific essay in class or to another student. I saw them as essays on 48 homelessness-related topics not selected by me or the authors.

A critical point in the semester came when several students wrote and voiced their objections to one of the book author’s “snarky” and “condescending” tone. While I often invite students to disagree with me and the readings, it was refreshing to witness it happening.

Two local adults spoke to the class, one was in and out of foster homes in her youth and tended to her homeless father, and the other is a recently unhoused 60-year-old man who is digging his way out of the hole of homelessness. Additionally, we welcomed a Missouri state government program administrator and a Kansas City nonprofit organization executive director, both former MU political science students, to talk about their careers, but also how they managed the life-work balance. They related children’s poverty, neglect and abuse, and affordable housing to homelessness. A class member’s efforts resulted in us listening to a speaker on human trafficking.

Each student was asked to post an original ChatGPT request to “write an 800-word essay about some aspect of homelessness.” Topics selected include “big topics” such as the effectiveness of “housing first” initiatives and “harm reduction drug programs” to more practical issues such as “should shelters be required to house pets owned by homeless guests?” The number of class members selecting a childhood or youth topic moved those topics up the priority scale.

The highlight of the semester was students proposing a policy resolution to address an aspect of homelessness. There were proposals for better delivery of medical assistance, for addressing subpar parenting and foster care deficiencies, for providing incentives to landlords to accept rental vouchers, for establishing harm reduction sections of shelters, and for employing shelter guests to do some of the tasks now done by volunteers. Two topics new to me related to providing physical therapy and dental services to homeless people. A controversial proposal was the “Homeless Pet and People Initiative” that provides an incentive for animal care facilities to hire homeless people so that they had access to pets and required shelters to house pets owned by homeless people.

Two takeaways from the semester emerged and were reinforced by several speakers and readings. First, “housing first” may have been an effective attention-grabbing slogan a decade ago, but housing without “wraparound services” relating to mental health, nutrition and financial counseling is not likely to have long-lasting positive impacts. Second, the slogan “a person doesn’t become homeless when they run out of money, they become homeless when they run out of relationships” should cause us all to pause and think “how did this person get into this situation and how can other cases be prevented? “

While not a cross section of college students, or even MU’s student population, these students proved to be thoughtful, motivated, interested, skillful and respectful to one another. I expect they will be compassionate and informed doctors, dentists, lawyers, EMTs, therapists, scientists, teachers, government officials and parents.

David Webber joined the MU Political Science Department in 1986 and wrote his first colun for the Missourian in 1994. He writes twice monthly.

Columbia’s homelessness support network moves from volunteer to opportunity campus

David Webber, Columbia MISSOURIAN, December 2, 2023

With the Room at the Inn stabilizing its operation in one location, Loaves and Fishes looking for a new home and the opportunity campus breaking ground for a multi-purpose facility, it is a good time to look at the history our town’s organizations that have evolved into a homeless services network in the past two decades.

I was fortunate to be involved in the roots of Room at the Inn when I responded to a news article that the Missouri United Methodist Church on Ninth Street was keeping its doors open for homeless people to sleep. I recall it was January or February 2009 and it took place in MUMC’s second floor multi-purpose room due to a large snowstorm. The church’s pastor at the time, the Rev. Jim Bryan, and several other pastors of downtown churches had been cooperating on similar efforts.

Bryan once said, “I put out a call for donations, and money kept coming in, so I knew Columbia was ready to take action to care for the homeless.”

I helped set up cots and checked in guests but mostly drank coffee, played cards and talked with guests and volunteers well after my “shift” was over. I immediately adopted a “street level perspective” focusing on homelessness not so much as a public policy or social issue, but through the eyes and lives of real people.

Those experiences prepared me to write two plays. ”A Night at the Shelter” sheds light on the homeless community and those who help them and dozens of op-ed columns about homelessness.

Columbia homeless network that is best described, in 2023, by the roster of 24 nonprofit and governmental members of the Boone County Coalition to End Homelessness. In addition to conducting the annual point-in-time count twice a year organized as Project Homeless Connect, the coalition prioritizes housing resources in twice-a-month meetings of government and nonprofit organizations.

Before 2009, there were established organizations assisting the homeless community and people living in poverty. The Salvation Army’s Harbor House goes back until at least the mid-1980s, and it now provides temporary shelter, up to 90 days at a time, for about 50 adults. The Columbia Housing Authority Home operates Oak Towers, Paquin Towers and at least five other complexes and distributes hundreds of housing vouchers, with a waiting list of about 400 applications.

Additionally, the Food Bank for Central & Northeast Missouri, the Voluntary Action Center, and Love Columbia, all organize financial resources, volunteers and community knowledge to help needy Columbians obtain housing, jobs and transportation.

Back in 2009, relationships and organizations were less formal than they are today. I remember learning that something called the Columbia Interfaith Resource Center operated a “day center” at Seventh and Park Avenue across from the old Armory. They shared space with Loaves and Fishes, a soup kitchen founded by a Catholic Worker Community and several local churches in the early 1980s.

In early 2012, Wilkes Boulevard Methodist Church led by Pastor Meg Hegemann provided space for Loaves and Fishes and an expanded day center named Turning Point.

Room at the Inn continued in Missouri Methodist’s multipurpose room as a seasonal shelter until 2012 when it moved to an unoccupied garden center on Old 63 near Stephens Lake. They planned for 40 cots but were restricted by the fire department to 10 cots a night, although food and extra blankets were often provided by willing volunteers.

Until the 2020 pandemic, Room at the Inn rotated among at least six churches as a seasonal shelter from December to mid-March with about 50 cots and a light dinner staffed by hundreds of volunteers. In 2022, Room At the Inn moved to the Ashely Street Center, previously the VFW Hall, and sheltered about 60 people a night.

Loaves and Fishes, after a decade of being located at the Wilkes Church, is looking for a new home. It currently serves about 130 people a night, with dinner being provided and served by about 30 groups, mostly church groups, averaging about eight volunteers each, and about 15 additional volunteers who serve as greeters and monitors.

Just as Room at the Inn is presently dealing with fewer and less habitual volunteers in its new location, the current Loaves and Fishes model will face significant challenges in a new location while continuing the amazing feat of serving dinner nearly 365 days a year.

Columbia has invested the lions’ share of our $25 million American Rescue Plan Act funding to affordable housing and homeless services. The opportunity campus, to be organized by VAC and largely made possible by the city’s allocation of federal ARPA funds, is planning a shelter capacity of 125 cots, 12 months a year with 24/7 services. This is a giant step of a difference from the 2012 Room at the Inn in the Old 63 greenhouse with its pre-pandemic goal of 50 cots, and even his year’s capacity of 100 cots at the Ashley Street Center.

As I wrote last December, there is a fundamental difference between the volunteer provision of homeless services and the professional, paid provision of the same services. On one hand, the latter can be more consistent and informed; on the other hand, professional services routinely can become standardized with less attention to individual needs.

Look now and you see a transition from a largely volunteer shelter and food programs to government-funded and organized homelessness services but without clear and direct government oversight. This should concern Columbia citizens and leaders because 1. these nonprofits may not be prepared to govern themselves with their increased responsibilities; and

2. Columbia’s homeless population may increase to fill the new resources with a likely call for more government resources.

A secondary impact of government-funded nonprofits with full-time staff and “paid volunteers” is that the charitable volunteer experience of being your brothers’ and sisters’ keeper will be lost. Wasn’t that the point of starting Room at the Inn and Loaves and Fishes in the first place?

David Webber joined the MU Political Science Department in 1986 and wrote his first column for the Missourian in 1994

Homeless survey–please complete for my class

My class “Homelessness in America” is doing a survey to learn responses to their paper topics. Please complete this survey

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TND7KG5

I will most likely write a review of survey responses in 2-3 weeks.

CoMo Street Gazette–issue 3

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/comostreetgazette/?fbclid=IwAR24m4zxzkAL4pMjXvAP-zhtnO91j3SeI2HUts54jgoNTiNoktk9Ttagy1Y

South Korea holds lessons about homelessness

David Webber, Columbia MISSOURIAN, September 8, 2023

Seeing a new situation often allows you to see the familiar differently. So, it was when I visited South Korea in June and paid particular attention to their homeless residents.

There are several similarities with America’s homeless crisis, with one major exception — there are no tent cities or run-down RV parks like those in San Francisco, Seattle and Phoenix. However, there are unhoused Koreans staying in tiny shanties where I would not want to stay.

Koreans gave me an idea about how to resolve the debate over the preferred terminology for referring to people who have no regular housing fit for human habitation. Several native Koreans explained to me that the most common Korean term for a homeless person is “nosugja,” which means “person sleeping on the street.” However, in one conversation the bilingual translator interpreted it as “displaced persons.” That led to a discussion of how homeless people are displaced — displaced from houses, from jobs, from families, from hospitals, from social groups, from their hometowns. Historically, displaced person usually meant someone forced out of their home because of war. But the current use of “homelessness” is too narrow a term.

South Korea in 2022 had an official estimate of 8,986 homeless people out of a total population of 52 million. Compared to the United States’ 600,000 out of a population of 335 million, Korea’s homeless rate is about one-tenth that of the U.S. Of course, definition and counting methods may vary, but the general conclusion is valid that we have many, many more homeless.

I suspect the No. 1 reason for such a huge difference between the two countries is America’s history of drug use. South Korea is often considered to have among the harshest anti-drug laws. Additionally, Korean men have two years of compulsory military service that probably focuses their transition from high school to independent living.

The Korean government estimates that about half of the homeless population is in Seoul, with 83% of homeless people staying in local shelters and the remaining 17% — about 2,000 people — on the street. It’s estimated that 75% of those on the street are in Seoul, the nation’s capital.

Seoul Station, similar to Grand Central Station in New York City, is the epicenter of homelessness with several hundred drunken and unkept humans, probably 90% men, lying on the sidewalks, “flying a sign” and panhandling as train and subway passengers walk nearby. A few had umbrellas rigged up to provide shade, but most were cooking in the hot summer sun.

A change I noticed from my last trip to Seoul in 2015 was that the metro system stations and adjoining pedestrian tunnels are virtually free of homeless people. In 2015, I frequently walked through a pedestrian tunnel that had several men and women living in cardboard boxes, on which commuters would leave food and change. These makeshift homes are gone.

This June I received a closeup view of Seoul homelessness after having the good fortune of meeting Hee Jung Lee, who is a visiting scholar at MU’s Asian Affairs Center. She arranged for me to meet Pastor Choi Seong-won, director of the Seoul Station Homeless Rehabilitation Center.

Choi estimates that 80% of Seoul’s street sleepers are former prisoners and 20% are mentally ill. Alcohol is, or becomes, a big problem. About 3% to 5% are young people, with the oldest he knows of being 86 years old.

As in the U.S., homelessness services in Korea are a mix of nonprofit and government assistance. Pastor Choi operates a food pantry and a soup kitchen, where he serves about 200 people a day using his personal pension for funding. Choi is innovative in helping the homeless. Korean government aid often depends on applicants having some sort of job. Choi started a job center with smoking cessation and alcohol and drug rehabilitation programs. He has an informal program where homeless people start by collecting discarded cardboard on the street and after three months can move up to a clerk and record keeper before Choi sends them off to a job interview. Choi estimates he has helped more than 400 Koreans find jobs.

Occasionally, rural shanties that appear to be home to a person or two are visible from the train as you pass through villages in the Korean mountains, but I would call that rural poverty, not homelessness.

More disturbing was the density of homeless people living in “jjokbangs,” which means “divided space” under overpasses and bridges in southern Seoul near prosperous businesses and hotels. Pastor Choi drove me through a site under a bridge that had several hundred residents staying in jjokbang shacks where they hardly had space to stretch out. A typical jjokbang unit, of which there are more than 3,000 in Seoul, is about the size of a 4×8 sheet of plywood, or 32 square feet. Most of these shanties are privately owned, with the residents paying rent, so the incentive to keep dividing them into smaller units is great.

Across Seoul these shacks have been sold and demolished for economic development, sometimes for public housing but more often for private development. That means more unsheltered people will be headed to Seoul Station.

One root of Korean homelessness is the 2008 economic crisis that eliminated thousands of jobs and displaced men to the streets. Perhaps even a larger cause is the high cost and low supply of affordable housing — like the U.S.

Because they lack housing security, homeless people often lack financial services. In the U.S, we debate the role of the private sector and payday loans, which charge very high interest rates. In Korea, savings accounts and small loans are available in government post offices.

Addressing homelessness requires a balancing of expectations and compassion. South Korea’s balance is probably too harsh for most Americans, but South Korea offers lessons for our homeless service providers.

David Webber joined the MU Political Science Department in 1986 and wrote his first column for the Missourian in 1994. He now writes twice monthly.

Second Issue of the CoMo Street Gazette

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/comostreetgazette/

CoMo Street Gazette

How to find medical care, dental care and a free phone

• BY STEPHANIE YOAKUM

Missouri Medicaid will typically cover eye exams and dental assistance.

Tasty recipes to make anywhere you are

• BY NUTRIZOU

Make a peanut butter and banana sandwich or quick mac n’ cheese.

One person’s view: Food, shelter, clothing and bikes

• BY LEON LAMBETH

We all have three human needs: food, shelter, clothing. Homeless humans are no different.

Tiny Joys

• BY EMERY LOU

So some days my heart wins, at the risk of my peace, I give in.

Homeless angel

• BY KIMBERLEE ESTRADA

Here I am once more, taking my last box of items out the door.

Where does a homeless person go?

In memory of Mary Jo Reynolds (Dec. 17, 1964-July 11, 2023) who started this list in May 2023 at the Columbia Public Library.

Remembering Mary Jo

• BY JAMES FULTON

She battles addiction, a foe that won’t yield, but her smile never fades, it’s her weapon and shield.

Wanted: People to help loom recycled plastic sleeping mats

• COMO STREET GAZETTE STAFF

The Seyers will hold a demonstration of the looming project in at 7 p.m. Sept. 14 in the Columbia Public Library.

Food Bank Market to open this fall

• STREET GAZETTE STAFF

The former food pantry on Big Bear Boulevard will be known as The Food Bank Market, when it opens in late fall. The project to revamp the old Moser’s supermarket into the market has taken more than three years. The shopping space will increase from 3,000 square feet to 5,300 square feet.

How I began taking sandwiches to homeless camps

• BY ANGELA JOLLY

Angela Jolly’s project in a social work class led to connecting with the unhoused community in Columbia.

Artwork by Brian C.

• COURTESY OF BRIAN C.

Loaves and Fishes losing church location but will not close

• BY ERICA LITTLE

Loaves and Fishes, which provides meals to anyone who is hungry, now must find an alternative location.

Welcome to the CoMo Street Gazette

• DAVID WEBBER

Our goal is to give a voice to our fellow citizens by providing an outlet for them to tell their stories.

Columbia-inspired art

• SUBMITTED BY JOHN SMITH

John Smith creates artwork that features some Columbia businesses.

Never Give Up

• KENNY ROBINSON

After several stints in prison, Kenny Robinson returned to Columbia and found an apartment and work.

Harbor House Saved My Life

• BRIAN JOHNSON

I’m Brian Johnson. I’ll be 59 years old this summer. I’ve lived through a couple of rough years and know if it was not for Harbor House I probably wouldn’t be here today.

The Life Behind my Poem

• KIMBERLEE ESTRADA

Kimberlee Estrada was living in Rolla when she wrote the poem “Drug of Habit” while battling an addiction with a needle.

The Lost Sea

• ELIZABETH DORMAN

Whispers and whistles from the wind

Community Resources

Here is a list of the resources available around Columbia to those in need.

Ramen Survival Kit (aka Prison Pizza)

• DANA WILLIAMS

Ramen Survival Kit

CoMo Street Gazette

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/comostreetgazette/