City of OKC launches ‘housing first’ plan to address homelessness

Last Updated on August 6, 2023, 3:06 AM | Published: April 13, 2023

OKLAHOMA CITY — Increased funding alone will not solve Oklahoma City’s homelessness problem.

That was the repeated consensus during a nearly three-hour special meeting of the OKC City Council on April 4th, billed as a “workshop” to address the city’s continuing homelessness issue, where presenters advocated for a multi-year, multipronged approach that places the central focus on housing supply.

The plan is to use $12.5 million to reduce the city’s homeless population by 75% over the next two years.

And, it’s not a pipe dream. Houston, which started with a far larger problem, has reduced their homeless population by 64% and their unsheltered population by 70%.

The Council heard from members of the mayor’s longstanding Task Force on Homelessness – comprised of city employees from across various departments as well as a number of “key stakeholders” – and from outside consultants tasked with identifying contributing factors and possible solutions for city homelessness.

The workshop was held partially in response to the unprecedented public outcry against controversial, ultimately failed, new policing proposals from November of last year that many saw as openly anti-homeless.

City Council strikes anti-homeless items after residents’ objections

Housing supply problem

Community development consultant Mandy Chapman Semple of Texas-based Clutch Consulting was brought in to assist with city homelessness research over a year ago, and was on hand to address the workshop about recent nationwide findings on the root causes of homelessness.

Rather than mental health or drug concerns, research suggests that the driving factor is housing.

“What they found,” Semple told the gathering, “was that the actual correlating factor to a high rate of homelessness is the housing market conditions. Cities with higher rental rates and less vacancy rates are having higher rates of homelessness.”

“We can build really balanced, healthy communities, but we have to be willing to embrace an evolution of our communities.

Mandy Chapman Semple of Texas-based Clutch Consulting

Proposed solutions, then, would need to focus on much more than just increased funding for outreach, instead utilizing city resources directly to increase housing supply and to assist with efforts and expenses for relocating and housing the city’s homeless residents into those new housing units.

“We can build really balanced, healthy communities,” Semple told Free Press following the workshop, “but we have to be willing to embrace an evolution of our communities. We have to continue to grow, and we have to scale housing and response to the people who need housing.”

‘Key to Home‘ multi-year initiative

With strategies focused on addressing homelessness primarily as a housing issue, the workshop’s central presentation was the Key to Home Partnership, a multi-year initiative broken down into four comprehensive steps:

1. Creating a new “governing system” with a dedicated board and leading agency designed explicitly to oversee homelessness reduction in the city.

2. Addressing and managing homelessness differently by collecting continuing, real-time data on homeless numbers, assigning dedicated teams to targeted goals, and most importantly, appropriating MAPS 4 funds to build and establish 500 new, permanent housing units.

3. Reducing youth homelessness by identifying homeless and at-risk youth and helping to divert them from shelters and streets into available housing.

4. Reducing unsheltered homelessness by relocating those living in encampments into housing, assisting with transition and stabilization, and permanently “decommissioning” camps by breaking up and clearing them out.

The plan sets the lofty goal of a 75% reduction in citywide homelessness by 2025.

All told, the complete, multi-year initiative is expected to cost $12.5 million, with city resources covering up to $7 million and the remainder coming primarily from corporate partnerships and outside donors.

That expected total accounts for administrative costs, rental subsidies, security deposit coverage, and the building of a housing navigation center that is planned to include a number of shelter beds.

Working together

This ambitious, comprehensive approach will require direct, coordinated partnerships across city services and non-profit outreach programs.

While the Mental Health Association of OKC works to engage and identify encampment residents, City Rescue Mission will work to secure housing, the Homeless Alliance will assist unsheltered residents with applying and moving, and once cleared, OKCPD’s Homeless Outreach Team will “decommission” encampment areas.

Though each of these groups has fulfilled these roles separately for years, this initiative stands to be the first time they have all worked so closely and cohesively together toward the single, stated goal of housing OKC’s homeless residents.

Building trust

As the daunting work begins for this all-hands, “housing first” approach, participating leaders are preparing to address an expected level of suspicion from those that have had difficulties in the past navigating these programs and departments separately, without a coherent, unifying plan.

“Our biggest challenge is that a lot of people that live on the street have just lost trust in all of us,” said Shelah Farley, Clinical Director for the Mental Health Association of Oklahoma. 

As someone that regularly engages directly with homeless encampment residents, Farley knows well the frustration that can come with a lack of clear coordination between these groups.

“You have many different organizations that want to help, and they may make promises that they can’t keep,” she told Free Press, “and when that continues to happen to a population, eventually, you lose trust in all of us. So the biggest challenge for street outreach is just building that trust back up, because we don’t make promises that we can’t keep.”

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