OKLAHOMA CITY – Ward 7 City Councilman Camal Pennington hosted a town hall meeting for Ward 7 residents Tuesday evening featuring talks on upcoming state questions, homelessness, affordable housing, 23rd Street improvements, and the 2028 Olympics, all with the aim of promoting positive direction for northeast OKC development.
Several residents of Ward 7 – along with interested citizens from across the city – joined Pennington at Greater Mount Olive Baptist Church to hear about a vision for northeast OKC as the city prepares to host two events for the 2028 Olympics, which was a recurring theme throughout the evening.
While Olympics preparation was the common theme, the overall message from Pennington was that there are good things happening in Northeast OKC. Pennington said, “we are living in a really great time in Oklahoma City, and especially Northeast Oklahoma City.”
The 2028 Olympics
“The Olympics is so representative of that excitement, that energy, and the direction we are headed in as a community,” Pennington said in his opening remarks, adding “we’re hosting not one but two Olympic events right here in Ward 7.”
Pennington welcomed Michael Byrnes, President of Team OKC and LA28 Program Lead, to tell attendees about the Olympics coming to OKC.
“There have been instances already of national teams… think Team U.S.A., Team Japan, Team Germany, that’ve been in town with their athletes to be on the white water already and begin some of their training,” Byrnes told the audience.
Team OKC is a partner with LA28 in bringing the Olympics to OKC and bringing OKC to the Olympics. Byrnes’s team is planning for fan fests, fan experiences in the events, and even activities outside of the venues.
“We’re motivated to create experiences for those- even if they don’t have a ticket- to be a spectator at the event,” Byrnes said.
NE 23rd Street improvements
Representatives from OKC’s Key to Home partnership, the Oklahoma City Housing Advisory Group, the Oklahoma Policy Institute, and Mbroh Engineering addressed attendees with information about housing and building plans in Ward 7.
Ernestine Mbroh, Director of Transportation at Mbroh Engineering, gave a presentation on the 23rd Streetscape Project, a beautification and enhancement project that is almost ten years old.
It was determined when the project began in 2017, that all improvements would be based on residents sharing their needs and desires about the Historic Northeast 23rd Street area.
Suggestions like “resurfacing,” “landscaping and transitional landscaping,” “street lights,” and “public art (murals, sculptures, permanent sidewalk art, etc.)” showed up repeatedly in resident responses, and Mbroh shared projections of these implementations throughout her presentation.
“Our timeline is really tight,” Mbroh said, acknowledging that, since the project began in 2017, “the scope has been changed in a good way.”
At first, the project would cover NE 23rd St. from Kelley Ave. to Miramar Blvd., but that scope has grown to go all the way to Bryant Ave. The stated goal from Mbroh is that these improvements are “100% completed by April 2027,” in time for the Olympics.
“I keep saying ‘if it goes well.’ It has to go well” because of the Olympics, Mbroh said about this timeline.
Homelessness and housing needs
Two speakers addressed housing affordability and homelessness in the meeting, both of which Councilman Pennington called “some of the most important issues our community is facing today.”
First up was Jamie Caves, Strategy Implementation Manager of Key to Home, who described the beginnings of the wide-reaching public-private partnership in 2023, when “OKC realized that faith communities and non-profits weren’t going to be able to… meet the needs” of the homeless in our city.
Caves offered some startling data points for homelessness in OKC, beginning with the 28% increase in homeless OKC saw in 2024. The next year, in 2025, homelessness only increased 2%, and in 2026, Caves shared, homelessness in OKC finally began to decrease, dropping by 1%.
“One percent doesn’t sound like a lot,” she said, “but the effort is working. It’s taking hold.”
Caves shared some strategies that Key to Home will employ in the coming years to end homelessness in Oklahoma City, including early intervention, strategic re-housing (including encampment re-housing), and cooperation with other non-profits which seek to proactively prevent homelessness.
“If we’re gonna talk about homelessness, we need to talk about housing,” Pennington said before welcoming the next speaker.
Shannon Entz, Housing Strategy Implementation Manager for the City of OKC’s Planning Department, also presented some startling stats, but that’s not to say it was a doom-and-gloom occasion.
Before getting into specifics, she shared the guiding principles for her work with the Housing Advisory Group: Rebuilding what once was there, and preserving what’s already there.
OKC needs approximately “34,000 houses,” Entz shared, adding that, “we need starter homes… safe rental properties. We need one-to-two bedroom houses.”
“We want to make sure affordable does not mean cheap,” she said, indicating that the Housing Advisory Group is determined to support good quality houses being built that working people can buy.
‘A great place to live…’
Councilman Pennington closed with a simple phrase that sums up much of what’s taking place in Ward 7 and Oklahoma City more generally.
“This will be a great place to live,” he said, “if we make it one.”
Tyler Smothers is a local, an Okie, and a poet living in Oklahoma City with his wife, Sadye, and their animals, Toby and Oscar.
He teaches medieval history and literature to 7th graders and loves everything from "Canterbury Tales" to "Mrs. Dalloway."
