"If my family hadn't stepped in and helped me, I might have been here on one of these cots."

By Rebecca Smith

Published June 19, 2025 at 7:00 AM CDT

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Operations Manager Jacqie Melloway prepares to make a bedroll with clean laundry on Dec. 19, 2024, at Room at the Inn in Columbia. Melloway said each guest's bedroll consists of a pillowcase containing a sheet and a blanket. "I know that I have a home to go to at night. Obviously, this place is not going to burn up if I say, 'I can't do this anymore.' But it also makes me feel like I have a purpose, if that makes sense. And I didn't, I didn't have that before, from a job," Melloway said. "It makes me feel good, even after you'll have a guest cuss at you, and five minutes later, you know they'll apologize. Or you'll have a guest tell you how great you are, ask you how my kids are doing. They don't have to do that, and they do."

Jaquie Melloway and John Trapp are the leadership team that run Room at the Inn, the local overnight shelter in Columbia that serves unhoused people.

They spoke about some of the things that have surprised them about the folks they serve.

For the month of June, we're focusing on the health of Columbia's unhoused community – specifically those who stay at the local overnight shelter, Room at the Inn.

Jacqie Melloway: So, I don't have any background in running a homeless shelter. I was a dental assistant for 15 years, and I quit that in, I think, 2020 – around COVID – and kind of just bounced around between jobs.

And I saw Room at the Inn post, and I had heard about the shelter, but I didn't know too much about it. I applied, and he [John Trapp] emailed me back, asking, you know, for an interview, and that's how I got started.

So, I didn't know how bad it was until I started working here. I'm from Columbia. I've always lived here, so I knew we had quite a few homeless people, but I did not know the extent of it. It's, well, it is surprising at how many, like, elderly people we have stay here.

We have, you know, just a couple of kids – I call them kids, they are technically adults, but yeah, that surprised me. How many people that are over the age of 60 that are here.

John Trapp: Almost universally they suffered childhood trauma. Head injuries – I would say a third of this population has had a traumatic head injury, which that that really surprised me when I first got into this work.

Sharon, 54, pushes a shopping cart full of her belongings on Dec. 19, 2024, outside Turning Point in Columbia. After getting hit by a truck five years ago, Sharon said she is “blessed to be alive,” though it has been “way too long” since she has seen her family. “I don’t like being out here,” Sharon said. “I’m glad for it to be the end of the year.”

KBIA News

A Night at the Inn: A KBIA Audio Documentary

Anna Spidel

Reporters Anna Spidel, Harshawn Ratanpal and Rebecca Smith take listeners inside Columbia's only year-round homeless shelter, Room at the Inn, for one night.

For the most part, people aren't trying to freeload. A lot of folks are just broken. They don't have support for one reason or another – a lot of times due to addiction or mental health, they've driven away their family support.

And I know, for me, that I've reached points in my life where I couldn't pay my bills, and if my family hadn't stepped in and helped me, I might have been here on one of these cots.

So, I think that's not as uncommon as most people would think, you know, sometimes we got to rely on our family, and if you don't have that, then you fall down and nobody's there to help pick you up.

Jacqie Melloway: They are human beings just like everyone else, and like John said, a lot of them have trauma. They don't know where to even start. They have fallen on hard times – lost a job, their spouse, and then just haven't caught their footing back.