‘Good to feel normal.’ Columbia offers haircuts and food on World Homeless Day
Addie shifts her weight and tilts her head, working every angle to blend the blue and black strands of hair that frame 53-year-old Ritalia’s dark-lined eyes.
A few chairs over, another student of the Paul Mitchell cosmetology school takes electric clippers to a man’s barely there curly hair.
There’s seating for more than a dozen potential clients, lining a wall at the end of the gymnasium at Columbia’s Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
Cars fill the concrete lot outside. People spill out of city-owned vans while volunteers wrestle with extension cords and huge trays of donated food.
It’s Oct. 10, World Homeless Day. And for the first time, the city of Columbia is commemorating it with a free-for-all event where healthcare workers, housing experts, addiction specialists and more work to connect people with the various resources that most of the time are spread out across the city.
There are at least 837 people who are considered homeless in Richland County, according to a federally mandated annual count held each January. That count is widely considered low, because it only captures how many people volunteers encounter on a single day. Columbia is also considered the hub for homeless services for the entire Midlands region.
Before the end of the day, more than 200 people will have come through the doors of the community center at the end of the park at the edge of Columbia’s Five Points neighborhood.
People organizing the event say it was an opportunity for those individuals to access a wide variety of services that can help build a sense of normalcy for people experiencing homelessness, including free haircuts.
“You have to be invested in people” to be good at hair, says Emily, who is among the cosmetology students giving free cuts as part of the event, organized by Columbia’s Parks and Recreation and Homeless Services departments.
The students all agree — a simple haircut is one of those universal things that more often than not can really make a person’s day.
Ritalia takes a seat in front of the women who are clustered around folding tables stacked with spray bottles, combs and blue latex gloves. She closes her eyes while Addie, another Paul Mitchell student, drapes a thin cloak around her shoulders.
Strands of blue dust Ritalia’s collar as Addie trims around her neck.
“It feels good to feel normal,” Ritalia says.
The last three months of her life have been a whirlwind. At the start of the summer, she found herself in the midst of a deep depression, living in a hotel she couldn’t quite afford and reeling from a relationship gone wrong.
Today, she’s ebullient, with high, full cheeks that stay upright in a wide grin. She credits Columbia’s Rapid Shelter program for the change. It offers one-room shelters meant to give those experiencing homelessness a temporary place of their own, with the hope that it will eventually lead to permanent housing.
Elsewhere in the building, volunteers with the University of South Carolina athletics department dish out hot plates of donated jerk chicken and fried chicken, rice, cabbage and mac-and-cheese.
Upbeat music and hot food welcome another wave of people as the students wait patiently for more heads to shape and trim.
