OKPOLICY.ORG
In 2023, Gov. Kevin Stitt disbanded the Governor’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, a group created to prevent and end homelessness. The council was established in 2004 and existed under both Democratic and Republican governors. This year, a group of members have re-formed the council independently. The work of solving homelessness doesn’t end because the governor declared the work accomplished.
I am proud to serve as one of the 25 voting members of the newly formed Interagency Council on Homelessness of Oklahoma, which is filling the void left by the shuttering of the governor’s council. While our council is not officially a state entity, we will carry on our predecessors’ work crafting a statewide plan to address homelessness, tracking data, and coordinating care among providers to ensure all Oklahomans have shelter.
The problem of homelessness is growing. The past two years, I have volunteered for the Point-in-Time Count — a nationwide, community-led annual count of all people experiencing homelessness. I have talked to hard-working people who ended up losing their homes as the result of a single disaster — a job loss, an illness, a relationship breakdown. The reality is that most of us are one diagnosis, divorce, or layoff away from losing our homes.
One of my first actions when I started in my position as OK Policy’s housing policy analyst was to observe eviction court. Despite my familiarity with how pervasive eviction is in Oklahoma, I was still shocked by how many people were packed into that courtroom. A shortage of affordable housing and the end of pandemic-related rental assistance have made the situation even more dire. These days, the courtrooms aren’t big enough to hold all the people facing eviction. Without swift action from policymakers, more Oklahomans will find themselves without a place to sleep at night.
Oklahoma lawmakers have the policy tools available to decrease homelessness statewide. For a start, they can allocate resources to affordable housing construction, update our state’s unbalanced eviction process that favors landlords, and help ensure that every Oklahoma wage is a living wage. There are many data-driven solutions that can help reduce homelessness in our communities.
Instead, our legislators during the 2024 session opted to pass a bill subjecting Oklahomans experiencing homelessness with fines and even jail time. Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court made the situation worse by ruling that laws criminalizing homelessness are not unconstitutional. This just paves the way for more harmful and inhumane laws that push people experiencing homelessness further away from becoming housed.
This is why the work of the Interagency Council on Homelessness Oklahoma matters now more than ever. We need advocates for real solutions, not more laws that kick people when they are already at their worst. Oklahomans experiencing homelessness are our friends, neighbors, and fellow Oklahomans. The Interagency Council on Homelessness Oklahoma will help ensure they have a voice.
We hope that you will join in the efforts to reduce homelessness in our communities. You can contact your lawmaker to ask them to support and invest in data-driven policies that address the causes of homelessness. You can follow the Interagency Council on Homelessness of Oklahoma on social media to learn more about homelessness and how to support the work of the council. You can connect with other people who are working in this space, including through Together Oklahoma’s Thriving Families affinity group.
Working together, we can help ensure that everyone in our community can become safely housed.
