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One year after Gov. Kevin Stitt launched Operation Safe, some homeless encampments that were cleared by state troopers are back.

Dozens of people have taken shelter on state-owned property beneath a Tulsa underpass and tents and other temporary structures have popped up in wooded lots that were swept a year ago, according to local service providers. The Frontier visited some sites in Norman, Oklahoma City and Tulsa and saw evidence of people camping, including makeshift beds and personal belongings.  

Providers say people returned because they had nowhere else to go.

“It did not solve anything,” said Mack Haltom, CEO of the Tulsa Day Center. “Just simply scraping their belongings away did nothing more but scatter them.”

After the first sweep in September 2025, the Tulsa Day Center’s donation closet was quickly cleared out as people tried to replace the belongings they’d lost. The shelter estimates it spent about $1,000 more a month in the six months following the sweep replacing birth certificates and identification cards. 

It’s taken time to rebuild trust with people who were displaced and lost their belongings, Haltom said. 

“They cleared out trash, they cleared out belongings, those kinds of things, but they left a lot of hurt people,” Haltom said.

The city and service providers had no time to prepare; the state didn’t warn them about the impending sweep. And when outreach workers offered to go with Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers to help clear the encampments, they declined, according to Haltom. Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. Mark Southall, a spokesperson for the agency, said he didn’t recall any organization asking to accompany troopers. 

The state says it has spent more than $899,000 over the past year to remove encampments on state land in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The state hasn’t disclosed yet how much it spent to repeatedly clear one camp in Norman. Workers visited and cleared the same state-owned field there three times over the course of four months. 

Southall said there are currently no plans for additional Operation SAFE sweeps anywhere in the state. 

Tevis Hillis, a spokesperson for the governor, said the goal of Operation SAFE is to keep state property “safe and clean.” The state also connects people with help through Oklahoma’s Be A Neighbor program, an online platform users can search to find resources like food pantries, financial assistance and medical care.

“When community leaders and businesses ask the Governor for help with unsafe encampments or criminal activity on state property, the State will respond,” Hillis said in a written statement. 

In response to The Frontier’s questions about returning encampments and whether there are plans for additional Operation SAFE sweeps, Hillis said: “Lasting progress after Operation SAFE requires local leadership to address broader public-safety challenges and maintain the progress made on state property.”

Service providers were able to get permanent housing for nearly 50 displaced people in Oklahoma City during and after sweeps in October 2025 with the help of state funding. Troopers told those who remained at the encampments that they had to move.

While there weren’t permanent encampments in some areas state troopers cleared in Oklahoma City, The Frontier recently found people camping on city land or private property nearby. 

By Larry McAtee Park at Crystal Lake, a few blocks from a site off Interstate 40 that troopers swept, a few camps were set up with tents and scattered belongings. The Frontier observed people panhandling, some with carts full of their possessions, at off-ramps along I-40 by other overpasses state troopers cleared as part of Operation SAFE.

Blankets, sleeping bags and other belongings could be seen near the Interstate 235 overpass on NW 23rd Street a few blocks from the state Capitol. A couple with three dogs were taking shelter from the rain on Sept. 30 under the overpass and said they planned to sleep there. There were also tents near a busy highway interchange on South Western Avenue and I-40. 

Unlike Tulsa and Norman, Oklahoma City benefitted from state funding to help house some people displaced by Operation SAFE. In a whiplash reversal from Stitt’s previous stance against using tax dollars to house people experiencing homelessness, the state agreed to pay up to $800,000 for housing and services.

But if it didn’t work, providers worried it would validate the misconception that there are no good solutions to end homelessness. 

“It did feel really high stakes,” said Meghan Mueller, CEO of the Oklahoma City-based Homeless Alliance. “It felt like if we don’t pull this off, this could really set us back.”

Over the course of the Oklahoma City sweeps, 47 people were housed. Only nine people camping on state property did not accept the housing offer, according to a spokesperson from Key to Home, the city’s housing program. As of Oct. 1, 40 of those people remain in the state-funded housing.

“Luckily we could see how things played out in Tulsa, and we were able to say, ‘You know, I think we can do that differently,'” Mueller said. “It shows again that you don’t just have to move a problem from one place to another. You can actually solve a problem by providing people with permanent housing.”

Key to Home also works to clear homeless encampments on city land and has housed nearly 650 people using a combination of city, federal and private funding over the past year. In August, a large stretch of tents located on a median by The Homeless Alliance was cleared, with around 70 people moving into permanent housing. 

Tulsa launched a similar initiative in November, just two months after Operation SAFE visited the city. Safe Move Tulsa has so far closed 12 encampments on public and private property and helped 723 people exit homelessness. Plans for Safe Move Tulsa were already underway before Operation SAFE launched. The city of Tulsa and private donations are funding the initiative. 

When state troopers first visited Norman in May, Food and Shelter Executive Director Cathy Billings thought they might bring housing offers and services with them as they had in Oklahoma City. But there would be no state funding for Norman. 

Dozens of tents stood in the vacant, state-owned field next to Food and Shelter with an estimated 40 to 60 people residing there when bulldozers arrived.

With nowhere else to go, people soon returned to the vacant lot. Troopers came twice more to clear the encampment in August, giving people 20 minutes to grab their things and vacate the area. Last time, troopers arrested 17 people for trespassing. 

“It was hard to watch that to be honest with you,” Billings said. “Because just the panic on their faces, you know, of ‘How much am I going to be able to carry?'” 

They’re still picking up the pieces. Food and Shelter and other Norman providers were left to pay the costs of replacing what was swept by the state operation, like identification cards and tents to protect people from the sun and rain. It was over 100 degrees outside on the day workers evicted the field in August and tossed the remaining items into dumpsters. 

Some things couldn’t be replaced, Billings said. “One of our folks, he had his father’s ashes in an urn, and they were gone. He just didn’t have enough time to pack everything up,” she said. 

The atmosphere in and around Food and Shelter was tense during the sweeps. One man had a seizure after his seizure medication was swept during the operation, she said. Five days later, the bulldozers came again.

“What progress we make gets kind of bulldozed — literally,” she said.

Carol Adams was one of several people sleeping in the Norman field the last time it was cleared. She asked troopers where she should go, but they didn’t have an answer.

She said the whole operation felt hostile, and that “people had forgotten what love was.” 

On a recent September afternoon, the shelter served corndogs for lunch. People sat at tables reading books, while others listened to music outside. The sun shone brightly over the nearby state-owned field that’s been cleared three times now by Operation SAFE. Tents were already popping up again. 

Adams said she’s just trying to survive. 

“It’s getting harder and harder,” she said.