Argomenti trattati
The story begins with a regular Saturday morning ritual: foil-wrapped bundles passed hand to hand across the city. In Columbus, a volunteer effort called Heart of St. Teresa (HOST) delivers burritos and other meals to people living without stable housing. The project, started by Leslie Bush and her late husband Geoff, feeds roughly a hundred people each week across multiple sites and depends on a rotating pool of volunteers drawn from a local Catholic community. For many recipients, the gesture is practical nourishment and a reminder of connection; for volunteers, it becomes a spiritual and moral anchor.
Volunteer efforts like HOST operate amid shifting public policy and fluctuating official counts. Local and national actions — from executive orders that affect how cities respond to street homelessness to changes in Department of Housing and Urban Development rules — reshape the options available to people without homes. At the same time, shelter capacity, warming stations, and informal encampments all interact with the lived decisions of people seeking safety and dignity. The accounts that follow trace one coalition’s work, the tensions it weathered, and the data that frames the larger picture.
The volunteer kitchen and a distributed safety net
The volunteer operation runs like a small production line: rotisserie chickens, rice prepared at home, cookies baked by parishioners, and an assembly team in the church kitchen that fills coolers and delivers them early Saturday. HOST relies on roughly 100 volunteers drawn from parish groups and neighbors; a handful of people can transform hours of work into meals that reach seven camps across the city. Leslie describes how donations, small fundraisers, and unexpected acts — a child’s lemonade stand, for example — have kept the operation afloat when the bank account looked empty. The rhythm of shopping on Thursdays and assembly on Fridays illustrates how informal logistics can sustain ongoing relief work.
From sanctuary to encampment: FIRST Collective and Camp Shameless
A separate yet overlapping effort grew inside Old First Presbyterian Church under the banner of FIRST Collective, an initiative that repurposed worship space for community organizing, pantry services, and arts programming. The group transformed unused rooms into a People’s Pantry and a nightly warming option when temperatures dropped. That decision led to tensions: long-standing congregants argued about liability, the building’s capacity, and whether providing overnight shelter enabled dependency. Those debates culminated in a lock change on the morning of March 29, 2026, when volunteers and organizers were escorted out. Before that moment, however, the church became an unconventional shelter and social hub where music played, sore feet were soaked, and volunteers learned names and stories.
The experimental encampment
When the church doors closed, volunteers and residents did not simply disperse. Tents purchased at a sporting goods store were pitched beside a community garden and a new visible encampment took shape: Camp Shameless. Unlike hidden encampments, this site remained highly visible and supported by a steady rotation of volunteers who mediated conflicts, accepted donations, and pushed back against law enforcement sweeps. The experiment prioritized resident voices, offered crisis support, and served as a base for advocacy at City Council meetings. It also exposed the practical limits of volunteer-run projects and the ethics of providing shelter without formal funding or institutional backing.
Policy, counts, and the limits of snapshots
Understanding the scale of the problem requires both community observation and formal data. For example, the Franklin County Point-in-Time (PIT) count in January 2026 recorded 2,556 people experiencing homelessness in the county — a 7.4 percent increase from the prior year — combining those in emergency shelters and those observed in unsheltered conditions. Nationally, the 2026 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report estimated 771,480 people experiencing homelessness in the United States. Yet these figures are single-night snapshots taken in winter; they miss people who couch-surf, hide in plain sight, or move between temporary arrangements. At the policy level, changes such as the rollback of eviction-notice protections and executive orders that affect civil commitment and benefits complicate how cities can respond. Those rules interact with local shelter capacity and with grassroots responses like HOST and FIRST Collective.
Across these efforts, volunteers and residents describe a recurring truth: direct assistance fills gaps but cannot substitute for systemic housing solutions. Leslie’s account — shaped by faith and by grief after Geoff’s death on May 14, 2026 — shows how mutual care sustains both givers and receivers. At the same time, FIRST Collective’s experience demonstrates the friction that arises when informal aid collides with institutional caution. Together these stories suggest that a patchwork of compassion, data, and policy reform will be necessary to move beyond weekend burritos and into long-term, humane responses to homelessness.