They serve up support

BY CAYLI YANAGIDA

Food, water and shelter are the basics for human survival. They’re also the greatest needs for those experiencing homelessness. Community support is vital in the effort to provide food, and that’s where groups such as CoMo Mobile Aid Collective and local restaurants come in.

According to the Missouri Balance of State Continuum of Care, there were about 330 people experiencing homelessness in Boone County in 2022. But that number is hard to verify and likely is higher. Catherine Armbrust, a member of CoMo Mobile Aid Collective, says the group provides 110 to 120 servings each time it holds a lunch.

CoMo Mobile Aid Collective is a nonprofit organization that started in 2018 under the name JB Mobile COMO. It works with local businesses, churches and restaurants to supply food and other basic necessities for Columbia’s unhoused community.

Local restaurant owners, including Main Squeeze’s Leigh Lockhart and Broadway Diner’s Dave Johnson, also have stepped in to help in various ways. Both Lockhart and Johnson have long connections to feeding those in need and don’t plan to stop anytime soon.

Healthy history

As a child in St. Louis County, Lockhart often wondered why she had a home when others didn’t. So, after she opened Main Squeeze in 1997, she looked for ways to help through food. She fed people directly from her restaurant and by delivering food, such as pans of lasagna, to Loaves and Fishes, an organization that provides evening meals to people experiencing homelessness.

“Decent food — food with nutrition, food that tastes good — is an inalienable right,” Lockhart says.

Lockhart continued providing for the unhoused community even after the economy took a turn for the worse in 2008. During a time when she was struggling with both the death of her father and keeping her business afloat, Lockhart says she received a $250 check from a man who asked her to use it to feed unhoused people. Unsure and startled, she didn’t know what to do. “But then I thought about my dad and what he would have wanted me to do,” Lockhart says. “That’s how it all started.”

Since last year, Lockhart has been working with CoMo Mobile Aid Collective, donating food from Main Squeeze, which is then taken to homeless shelters and encampments.

Lockhart says her food not only provides meals for those who might have allergies, but also for those who have dietary restrictions or don’t eat meat. She says that sometimes, unhoused folks might feel as if their needs don’t deserve to be met and will ignore allergies in order to find calories.

Armbrust says Lockhart has also provided CoMo Mobile Aid Collective with commercial pots and pans, shelves, 5-gallon buckets, cases of fruit and even provides access to her refrigerators for cold water and freezers for ice.

Building community

Johnson, whose family has been running Broadway Diner since 1989, lives by the belief that he should share what he has with others. So, when the pandemic started and schools closed, he provided meals for children who no longer had access to school lunches.

Now, Johnson has five or six regulars who come by the diner every day to receive a hot meal. Even if they have housing, John-

WANT TO HELP?

The CoMo Mobile Aid Collective accepts donations of money and goods, including blankets, sunscreen, sleeping bags and more. Learn more and see a full wish list at comomobileaid.org.

son says, they don’t have the money to keep up with their needs. Usually they come to the window and get something to go, but Johnson says he encourages them to come inside the diner. “I want them to be a part of the community inside since they are part of the community outside, as well,” he says. “I really like to encourage that interaction.”

Johnson says the meals are meant to be satisfying and warm. “We try to provide something that’s gonna get them through the day,” he says.

Johnson says he worked with CoMo Mobile Aid Collective last year, providing coffee for unhoused community members who spent a couple hours waiting at Bethany Hall for homeless facility services to start in the morning. Johnson says he would like to collaborate with the collective more this year and continue to help where he can. “This business is almost 80 years old,” he says. “And as long as my family has had it, and I suspect even further back than that, if somebody is hungry, we are going to do what we can to provide for them.”

Armbrust loves and appreciates the empathy shown by businesses in Columbia.

“It’s really wonderful and important that we have so many friends who own businesses that see the humanity in others and understand the need to offer radical love and radical hospitality to them,” Armbrust says.