It’s nearly noon on a cold January morning, and from the windows in the third floor lounge of the Ohio Union students outside can be seen streaming in all directions toward classes and local eateries. Inside, things are much quieter though.The long study couches are strewn with the prone bodies of sleeping men. Their tattered coats and bulging duffel bags sit beside them as they rest oblivious to the world around them.Most of these men are transients who hover about Ohio State’s fringes, and have drifted into the union within the last hour to escape the near-freezing temperatures outside.One of the more recent arrivals, a man named Carl, cannot find a couch to sleep on, and instead warms his calloused fingers on a Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate.’I’m pretty new in town, and I don’t have anywhere to stay yet,’ Carl said with a sigh as he rubbed at a week’s growth of facial hair. ‘This is one of the few places I can go around here without getting kicked out, and it’s too cold to stay outside.’The presence of Carl and the other homeless men in the union is not unusual. When the weather gets bad, a number of homeless people from around the campus area use OSU’s buildings as a last-resort shelter.Unfortunately, that creates problems for OSU students, faculty and staff members, said Ronald Michalec, chief of University Police.There are numerous occasions on which the homeless come into the buildings and create a nuisance, panhandling or reaching into people’s pockets for money, Michalec said.’If someone comes in and just sits there, I don’t think anyone has ever raised a complaint,’ he said. ‘But its hard to know sometimes whether someone sleeping or hidden away in a building is really there to sleep or if they want to cause some kind of trouble.’Usually, when a police officer discovers a homeless person lodged inside an OSU building they either give them a warning or offer to take them to a shelter in downtown Columbus. The idea is to get them out of the buildings without having to arrest them for criminal trespassing, Michalec said.’In this weather, it’d be negligence to turn someone out,’ he said. ‘You try to take them to a shelter or take them to jail, and only to jail if they become a problem.’The occasional arrest is made of individuals who had previously been warned off of OSU property for committing criminal offenses on campus, but arrests are outnumbered nearly 30-to-1 by incidents in which officers instead direct an individual to a help agency or physically take them to a shelter, Michalec said.Despite such efforts, the campus area, especially the buildings along High Street, is still inundated by homeless people seeking refuge from the cold, he said.The sheer number of homeless people in Columbus contributes to that.According to data compiled by the Columbus Community Shelter Board, the administrative body that oversees the shelter system in Columbus, the homeless population in Columbus exceeds 6,000 people, and may be as much as 19,000.Of those people, a large number stay around OSU, said Michael Cobbler, public relations director for Faith Mission, a downtown shelter that serves 34 percent of Columbus’ homeless population.’The area around campus has a large population of individuals who may not have a place to stay, and that’s because of the student population,’ Cobbler said. ‘Students are good targets for panhandling.’Shelters like Faith Mission encourage homeless individuals to leave the campus area and move to a help agency where they can get assistance like job training and counseling in a warm and safe environment.’Whatever the circumstances may be, there is no reason why someone who wants help can’t receive it,’ he said. ‘The hardest part is getting them here.’Funneling the transient population away from OSU toward the downtown shelters is made difficult by their distance from campus and a lack of available transportation to those sites.According to the Shelter Board, none of the nine shelters affiliated with their organization are located within three miles of campus, and no plans are underway to create one near campus.Because organizations like Faith Mission are funded primarily through individuals and grants, they generally lack the resources to provide transit to their shelters, Cobbler said.And the use of University Police to transport people to the various shelters is costly and an inefficient use of time, Michalec said.As a result, homeless people around campus are often forced to decide between trying to raise money for a taxi or bus ride downtown, or to simply retreat to a nearby OSU building. For someone like Carl, the choice is simple.’I don’t have any money, and I don’t need a shelter’s charity,’ Carl said softly. ‘As long as I have a warm place to go I can take care of myself, and I’m doing that here in this building. Maybe some people don’t like it, but until they have a better idea this is where I plan to stay.’