Annual OKC homeless count begins in dark early hours January 26

Last Updated on January 26, 2023, 7:58 AM | Published: January 25, 2023

OKLAHOMA CITY — Homeless service providers are gearing up for the annual Point-In-Time (PIT) count to be held starting in the dark early hours Thursday.

Every year trained volunteers gather during the coldest time of the year around 3 a.m. Then, teams carry out a systematic one-day survey of who in Oklahoma City is experiencing homelessness.

Holding the PIT count is required every two years by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in order for cities to continue to receive grants to address homelessness.

But, Oklahoma City goes further and conducts the count every year to better assess the need and what changes may be underway to the causes and effects of homelessness.

Last year’s official count was 1,339 according to Taylor Self with the Homeless Alliance.

‘Increase’

Wednesday, Free Press talked with Dan Straughan, executive director of the Homeless Alliance since its founding in 2004. We asked what they are anticipating they will find this year in the count.

“We have seen anecdotally an increase in unsheltered homelessness, with a lot of those folks telling our outreach workers that this is the first time they’ve been homeless, which is kind of unusual for Oklahoma City,” said Straughan.

“So we’re really concentrating on the the count in the survey for unsheltered homeless this year,” Straughan continued. “We’ll have 19 teams of six people each covering the whole city.”

Training

The Oklahoma City Homeless Alliance and the City of Oklahoma City Homeless Services department conducted training for those volunteers Wednesday afternoon.

About 110 volunteers made up mostly of people connected to various agencies gathered to receive training from Jerod Shadid, program planner for the City of Oklahoma City’s Homeless Services and Meghan Mueller, associate executive director at the Homeless Alliance.

The agencies and institutions represented by many of the volunteers are:

• The Homeless Alliance
• The City of OKC
• City Care OKC
• The City Rescue Mission
• Salvation Army
• The OKC Department of Veteran Affairs
• Arnall Family Foundation
• Community Service Council of Tulsa
• Diversion Hub
• Legal Aid
• Mental Health Association of Oklahoma
• NorthCare
• Oklahoma Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services
• OKC First Church of the Nazarene
• Oklahoma State University
• Pivot
• Positive Tomorrows
• Sisu Youth Services
• The United Way of Central Oklahoma
• The University of Oklahoma
• Volunteers of America

A sizeable percentage of volunteers have worked the count before, but were taken through the survey forms they will be filling out on each person they interview to try and achieve as accurate of a count as possible.

They were also cautioned about how to be respectful of the people many of whom they will be waking up in the middle of the night at the coldest time.

They were also trained on how to keep conflict to a minimum since they would be entering campsites of people who are accustomed to defending themselves against those who might do them harm.

They were reassured, though, that there had been no incidents of any volunteer ever being harmed in the many years of the PIT count.

Back up to speed

The count at the end of January 2020 just before the lockdown wasn’t affected, since concern about the already-brewing pandemic didn’t begin until late February.

But, the pandemic created a major interruption early in 2021 with the count being cancelled for that year.

In January of 2022 volunteers worked to get back up to speed after having lost a year.

Point in time homeless count resumes with annual effort across city

Volunteers at the training Wednesday and the leadership seemed confident in their understanding of what needed to be done the next day during the 24-hour period required by HUD.

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