Dusty Snider’s addiction started when he was just in high school, after a doctor prescribed him pain medication for a sports injury.
Abusing that medication sparked 16 years of drug use, with Snider moving in and out of jail and rehabilitation programs, and eventually, onto the street.
“I was addicted before I knew what addiction was,” Snider told the Rotary Club of Columbus on Tuesday at Lion Hills Center. “… So I became homeless just six years ago. Before I got my life together, I was living in a ditch over here on (Highway) 45.”
But after getting sober six years ago, Snider started a support group for those struggling to break free of addiction. By 2020, that grew to become Crossroads, a transition house and sober living facility affiliated with Columbus Christian Center, to give men with addictions a place to “get back on their feet.”
“My life choices have definitely taken some things from me, and if I could stop somebody from going down the path that I went down and give them a full life, that’s what I wanted to do,” Snider said.
The first Crossroads facility, Snider said, opened in the old Wiygul Dental Clinic on South McCrary Road in East Columbus. It holds up to 20 men at a time in a six- to nine-month program. The program graduates about 12 men a year, with a 67% success rate in the first three years, he said.
The program charges participants $125 a week to provide the men with all of their basic necessities, including transportation to and from work, Snider said.
“They have to work when they’re in our program,” Snider said.
Crossroads residents also go out and do community service regularly, Snider said, including picking up litter, building projects for the elderly, and handing out food at State Line Baptist Church’s food drive.
But this year, Snider said, Crossroads hopes to expand. In 2023, the former owners of Friendship Church, located off of Yorkville Road West, donated the church building to the nonprofit.
Snider’s vision for the new property, he said, is for it to become “phase one” for Crossroads, where someone who has gone through a medical detoxification process can stay for 30 days before transitioning to the sober living facility.
“It’d be the first stage where we can take them straight off the street, we can get them the counseling they need and the rest they need,” Snider said. “Work on their minds and their souls before we shoot them out to work.”
The second phase would still be in the current sober living location, while the third will be group meetings to keep recovering addicts on track.
But the new church building needed “a lot of work,” Snider said. Since getting the building, he and his team have already invested $80,000 into it to get it into shape. They still need another $50,000 for sprinklers and $20,000 for a new roof.
Opening the new facility also required the Columbus City Council to approve a permitted use request, since it is in a single-family residential zone. That request passed in March.
With the new location, Snider said, Crossroads will double in size. He is hoping the program can graduate 24 per year, all while keeping those people from committing other crimes out in the community.
“I know what I did when I was out there, because I terrorized these streets and stole from places and was just a bad mark on society,” Snider said. “And that’s 20 guys right now, maybe 40 guys we can keep off the streets right now, doing that kind of stuff and showing them a better way of life.”
Snider said he hopes to get the new location up and running by the end of the year, “if we can get the funding right.”
Snider told The Dispatch that Crossroads received nonprofit 501(c)(3) status two months ago. The program’s new website includes an application page for those who want to be on the waiting list. For more information, visit crossroadsofcolumbus.com/.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 38 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
