Advocates count homeless in OKC
On Thursday morning, a few hours before dawn, a pack of volunteers tramped through a patch of woods in southwest Oklahoma City, picking their way through vines, limbs and roots while keeping an eye out for anyone else who might be there.
At first, at least, it looked like no one was. Flashlights shone into the woods mostly illuminated nothing but the odd empty cup or soda can. Jennifer Thurman called out to anyone who could hear her.
“Outreach worker!” she shouted. “Good morning!”
No one answered. Thurman walked a few steps further into the woods.
“Good morning!” she called again. “Anybody out there?”
After a few minutes of walking, the team came to a collection of tents, shopping carts
and chairs. Around one of the tents, someone had built a structure out of shipping pallets. Nearby sat a milk crate filled with crushed aluminum cans. Inside one of the tents, a dog grumbled quietly.
Led by Jerod Shadid, an associate planner with the city of Oklahoma City’s division of community development, the volunteers kept calling out, saying they were working with the city’s annual Point in Time count.
Finally, someone answered. A bleary-eyed man poked his head out of a makeshift structure and told them he would talk to them as long as he didn’t have to come out into the cold.
Thurman and her fellow volunteer Lori Brooks asked the man a series of questions about how long he’d been homeless, where he usually sleeps and his sources of income. Thurman thanked him, Shadid handed him a bus pass and the man retreated into the shanty.
The Point in Time count is an annual census of the city’s homeless people. Beginning at 4 a.m. Thursday, teams of staffers and volunteers canvassed the city, checking areas where homeless camps had been reported.
The census is conducted by the Homeless Alliance, the Coalition to End Poverty and several other government agencies, nonprofits and faith-based groups. Once the results are compiled, they will be sent to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Over the next two hours, Shadid’s team visited about a half dozen spots across southwestern Oklahoma City, searching for signs of homeless camps. A few times, the team found spots where it looked like people had camped in the past. Most looked long since abandoned.
At daybreak, the team walked through a wooded area on the north bank of the Oklahoma River that was strewn with plastic bags. A desk chair sat between a pair of trees. A few feet away, a broken surveillance camera was fastened to the top of a sapling with electrical tape.
Volunteers called out, and a man’s voice answered from under a tarp a few feet away. The man said he would participate in the survey, but didn’t want to come out from under the tarp. So Lauren Dow, one of the volunteers, shouted questions through the tarp, and the man shouted answers back.
The city’s homeless count climbed by about 16 percent last year to 1,511, according to the 2016 Point in Time count.
But advocates estimate the community’s homeless population for the entire year is between four and five times the total found in the onenight census. That estimate would have placed the city’s actual homeless population between 6,044 and 7,555 last year.
At the time, advocates pointed to a number of factors to explain the increase, including job losses in the oil and gas industry and a temporary freeze on Housing Choice vouchers, commonly known as Section 8.
Dan Straughan, executive director of the Homeless Alliance, said he expects to see a similar increase this year. The same factors that likely caused last year’s spike in homelessness still exist this year, he said.
Added to those factors is the high rate of occupancy in rental properties across the city, Straughan said. That high occupancy rate means landlords can afford to be more choosy about their tenants, making it harder for those with bad credit or a criminal history to find housing.
Straughan said he expects the increase to be particularly stark among unsheltered homeless people and homeless families with children. Although the results of Thursday’s count won’t be available for months, Straughan said he’s heard anecdotal reports from agencies that work with those groups that their services are in high demand.
On Thursday morning at the Homeless Alliance’s day shelter, volunteers administered the same survey to hundreds of the shelter’s clients. One of them was Channel Steece, 39, who said she came to Oklahoma City about a year ago from Tijuana, in Baja California.
Steece said she and her husband came to Oklahoma City because her husband was promised a job and housing. But when they arrived, they learned the job didn’t exist, and they ended up on the street, where they’ve been for the past year.
Steece’s husband eventually found work. But Steece suffers from bone marrow cancer, and her medical expenses eat up most of the family’s income, making it nearly impossible to afford an apartment.
But with help from the Homeless Alliance, Steece and her husband are moving into housing on Monday. Once they do, she plans to take a long, hot shower and make a big dinner of pork chops, beans and cornbread.
“Thank God,” she said, pumping her fists. “I’m excited.”