For months, University of Missouri student researcher Lena Kolostov would attend CoMo Mobile Aid (CoMAC) medical clinics and food deliveries with a bucket of the “good treats.”
“I would go out there with just a bucket of candy and food, and it was like, ‘Hey, who wants to take my survey?’” Kolostov said. “People would just kind of gather around, and it was interesting. It was kind of like a community within the community because everyone would take the surveys, and then they would get excited.”
For last fall, Kolostov has been volunteering with CoMAC, a grassroots organization that works with the Columbia homeless population.
But several months ago, she was approached by Michelle Teti, a public health researcher at the University of Missouri, to see if she wanted to help with a research study that was a partnership between Teti and CoMAC.
“They were wanting to collect data on this population,” Kolostov said, “and were trying to find someone that could go in this population that's worked with them, that's trustworthy, has their trust, and can ask questions … because the survey is pretty in depth.”
She said the purpose of the study was to gather information on the issues they see many homeless people facing – housing, health, sleep and nutrition.
"A lot of [homeless] people are really trying. It's just so hard to find housing here, or find a job that pays enough here, or find your IDs and keep your medication and not get it stolen and do all those things at once, and have the community tell you that you're not trying enough."Lena Kolostov
Kolostov said even though CoMAC staff and volunteers are familiar with the many issues folks face while homeless, it was important to have quantitative data to back up that anecdotal understanding.
“To have it on paper that these are things that people are not getting just substantiates it more, and kind of solidifies there's a cycle happening here that's harder to get out of [than] just people not trying,” Kolostov said.
Steph Yoakum, the operations manager for CoMAC, said they had been wanting to gather data like this for many years, but it was the backing of a public health researcher and the support of dedicated volunteers that finally made the research possible.
She said one of the concerning results to her was the fact that 59% of respondents were experiencing first-time homelessness, and the most common reason for the situation was issues with income and employment.
“Since COVID and since the end of the pandemic protections and the financial protections given to tenants,” Yoakum said, “we’ve been experiencing a consistent influx. It's almost as if every year, not only are we getting more folks —it's the rate at which they're coming in is getting faster and faster.”
The city of Columbia reported 309 people experiencing homelessness in their 2025 Point-in-Time count, a one-day snapshot of the local homeless population.
Yoakum said the CoMAC study included survey data from 137 individuals. She added that they wanted to focus on more than just demographic data, and asked questions related to a person’s quality of life — such as access to restrooms and food, as well as quality and quantity of sleep.
According to the new report, respondents were getting, on average, less than six hours of sleep a night, and less than half of the respondents feeling safe while sleeping.
"This tells us we still need to be getting more food out to people. That you cannot treat a health condition if that person is starving first... That's the one thing we can control. We can't control their sleep, but we can make sure that we're in access for food for people."
When it came to food access, only 25% of the respondents reported they have some sort of access to food, and nearly half of all participants reported not having eaten a meal that made them feel full in weeks or months.
“We are running a game of psychological warfare on sleep and food, and people are hungry and they're not getting enough sleep, and they're getting far too many interruptions in their sleep, and they don't feel safe when they're sleeping,” Yoakum said. “And if your body can't rest and reset. You're not in the state of mind to go work your full-time job the next day or attempt to go look for a job.”
Yoakum said one of the other focuses on the research was how people were interacting with the healthcare systems in Columbia.
Many common health conditions were among those reported by participants, including diabetes, heart conditions and eyesight. But the largest condition reported was mental health — with more than 30% of participants identifying it as a concern.
When it came to access to care, most respondents said their access was average or good, as was their experiences with places of care or medical offices outside of CoMAC.
But the report also noted that approximately 20% of participants reported as having “poor” or “terrible” experiences.
“What we found is that people come here from Edina, Missouri, and Chillicothe, Missouri, and Auxvasse, and Versailles, and the Lake,” Yoakum said. “We advertise Columbia as being this healthcare hub. This is where people are going to come.”
Yoakum said they hope to use the newly released data to work toward policy changes and to adapt CoMAC's priorities.
They also plan to replicate the research process in the future — focusing on different topics, including hospital discharge policies and increasing food access.
