OKPOLICY.ORG
Sen. Lisa Strandridge, R-Norman, issued a press release last week thanking Gov. Stitt for his work in clearing a state-owned property site in Norman of a homeless encampment. Standridge said the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has now cleared the encampment three times in recent months.
After a sweep on Friday and repeated warnings that camping is not permitted, 17 individuals who returned were arrested on various charges, including some for drug and alcohol-related crimes. “It’s evident that repeated sweeps and consistent efforts to connect individuals with services and treatment are key to preventing this encampment from returning,” she said.
Arrests and jail appear to offer only temporary relief for local property owners affected by homelessness, while adding strain to the jail and court system. When people are arrested, they must be charged, appear in court, and move through a system that was not designed to address homelessness. Without help and resources, they are likely to become homeless again.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, contrary to common narratives, homelessness is not primarily caused by personal factors like addiction or mental illness. These may be precipitating factors for some people, but the homelessness crisis is primarily driven by broader economic and systemic issues, such as lack of affordable housing, income, and public benefits not keeping up with rising housing costs, inadequate access to quality healthcare and supportive services, and systematic racism and marginalization.
Homelessness has reached a crisis level across the country over the past 40 years. According to Mark Hovath, founder of Invisible People, many of the factors that helped to cause our current homelessness crisis began with the federal government’s housing priorities and policies introduced in the 1980s.
According to a February 2024 article by Chris Lester, in 1978, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s budget was over $83 billion (in 2004 constant dollars). By 1983, HUD’s budget had fallen to little more than $18 billion (in 2004 constant dollars). This dramatic reduction had a substantial impact on the work HUD could perform, exemplified by the fact that during the 6 years from 1976 to 1982, over 755,000 new public housing units were built, but from 1983 to 2007, a period of 23 years, only 256,000 units were built by HUD.
At the same time, rates of homelessness were skyrocketing. Multiple sources agree that the size of the homeless population by the late 1980s had grown to somewhere between 400,000 and 600,000, compared to an estimated 125,000 in 1980.
While there are several attributable factors to this increase, including the economic downturn in the 1970s and the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the most direct cause was likely these cutbacks to affordable housing programs.
The HUD 2025 Annual Homeless Assessment Report found that on a single day in 2025, there were 414,547 homeless people in emergency shelters, 62,817 in transitional housing, 266,320 in unsheltered locations, 160,505 in rapid rehousing beds, and 408,167 in permanent supportive beds.
In Oklahoma, the largest state investment to deal with the crisis came in 2023, when Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, and Rep. Kevin Wallace, R-Wellston, introduced House Bill 1031, which created the Oklahoma Housing Stability Program to fund urban and rural housing developments and offer homebuilder loans with interest rates as low as 0%.
The measure also establishes the Oklahoma Increased Housing Program to create more affordable housing by allowing developers to apply for gap financing and homebuyers to apply for a grant assisting in making their down payments.
The bill passed and went into effect without Gov. Stitt’s signature, and the Legislature funded the program with a $215 million appropriation with separate allocations for urban and rural areas. Applications for the Urban Set-Aside under the Oklahoma Housing Stability Program are now paused due to lack of current funding.
Given the complexity of homelessness, there is plenty more work to be done for any legislator, governor, or community leader truly interested in improving the crisis. It’s going to take more than ordering the Oklahoma Highway Patrol to move a few homeless people and their belongings off state property and making some arrests.
