The City of Oklahoma City sends this information as posted below:
Oklahoma City’s annual Point-in-Time (PIT) count of people experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City will be held on Jan. 23.
Previously coordinated in partnership with the Homeless Alliance, the 2025 count is being led by the Key to Home Partnership, the lead agency for OKC’s continuum of homeless service providers.
The count provides an annual snapshot of the number of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City on a single day.
This all-day endeavor will send over 100 volunteers to encampments, shelters and day centers across Oklahoma City to survey people experiencing homelessness. Along with the survey, volunteers will offer additional resources and service connections. Community partners, such as the Homeless Alliance, City Rescue Mission, City Care and more, are essential to conducting the PIT count.
The survey helps Oklahoma City leaders and local homeless-serving agencies identify trends from year to year, coordinate services and build programming to better support unhoused neighbors as they transition into housing.
“We have to understand the scope of the problem in order to address it,” Homeless Strategy Implementation Manager Jamie Caves said. “The annual PIT count helps us better understand trends among specific populations experiencing homelessness and develop targeted strategies for addressing their unique challenges.”
The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development requires funded communities conduct this survey at least once every two years, although Oklahoma City has historically conducted its survey annually.
“No one should face homelessness in Oklahoma City,” Caves added. “Everyone deserves the dignity of affordable, safe housing.”
2024 Point-in-Time results
In 2024, 1,838 unhoused individuals were counted living in emergency shelters or outside in Oklahoma City, an increase of 402 people from the 2023 count.
The count found:
- 7% of the population are veterans.
- 17% are members of families with children; none were sleeping outside.
- 36% are female, 62% are male, 2% are transgender or another gender identity.
- 45% are white, 35% are black, 9% are Native American.
- 9% are unaccompanied youth aged 24 or younger; no unaccompanied minors were sleeping outside.
- 24% are considered “chronically” homeless, meaning they have been experiencing homelessness for over twelve months.
- 62% were staying in a shelter, 13% in transitional housing, 1% in safe havens and 24% were unsheltered.
On Dec. 27, 2024, HUD released its 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report: Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates. The report found more than 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night nationally in January 2024, an 18% increase from 2023.
About Key to Home Partnership
To address homelessness differently in Oklahoma City, a new system of governance called the Key to Home Partnership was launched in April 2023. Key to Home is a public-private partnership of over 50 agencies whose mission is to address homelessness differently in OKC alongside the City of OKC and the private sector.
The Key to Home Partnership’s action plan is to reduce unsheltered homelessness through housing. The four goals for 2023-2025 include:
- Create a new governance system.
- Address homelessness differently by improving infrastructure and capacity.
- Achieve a reduction in Youth Homelessness by rehousing or diverting 100 youth by the end of 2025.
- Achieve a reduction in chronic unsheltered homelessness by rehousing 500 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness by the end of 2025.
Since September 2023, 332 people living outdoors have been placed in homes through the initiative, surpassing the halfway mark of the overall goal.
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