The state is negotiating a contract to pay up to $800,000 for housing and services for some people after Gov. Kevin Stitt’s push to clear homeless encampments on state property in Oklahoma City. 

The pending deal between the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and the City of Oklahoma City would cover the costs of stabilization services, case management and housing for those displaced by Stitt’s Operation SAFE. 

The planned use of state funds hasn’t been previously reported and marks a reversal from Stitt’s prior stance against housing people experiencing homelessness with taxpayer money. Stitt said in 2023 that homelessness won’t be solved by handing out “free stuff” — a message he echoed less than a week after Operation SAFE launched in Oklahoma City. 

Go behind the story

Subscribe

We’ll never share your email, and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Leave this field empty if you're human:

“This is not the state’s job,” Stitt told KOCO during a Nov. 2 interview. “When you build housing, when you make it easier to be homeless, when you give everybody three meals a day and a house to live in — that is not, you can never build enough houses. You will just continue to attract and attract and attract.”

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol and Oklahoma Department of Transportation began clearing homeless encampments from state property in Oklahoma City in October as part of Stitt’s Operation SAFE. At least 11 encampments have been cleared so far. State officials are planning additional phases of the operation.

The group Key to Home will track how many people stay in the program for at least 30 consecutive days to receive payments, said Abegail Cave, a spokesperson for Stitt. Key to Home is a public-private partnership working to prevent and end homelessness that is led by the City of Oklahoma City.

It costs about $1,666.67 a month to house one person, and Key to Home previously estimated as many as 80 people could be connected with housing throughout Operation SAFE. The group’s housing subsidies pay for up to a year in an apartment in Oklahoma City, according to a Key to Home spokesperson. 

Key to Home is required to submit monthly reports documenting individuals who’ve stayed in the program for a full month to the Department of Mental Health to receive the funding, Cave said. No funds had been remitted as of Nov. 17, Cave said. 

If Operation SAFE moves to other cities, Cave said the state will use a similar approach that ensures strict guidelines and expectations are followed and funding provided to municipalities and nonprofits is “stewarded well.” 

Stitt’s office launched Operation SAFE in Tulsa in September with a promise to give people living in homeless camps on state property “a ride to jail” if they refused treatment or housing and remained on the property. 

An executive summary of Operation SAFE obtained by The Frontier said Stitt rejected the “paralysis brought on by political correctness and bureaucratic inaction” and that Tulsa will be restored through “relentless law enforcement.” 

But the state softened its approach in Oklahoma City after reports in Tulsa of lost belongings and displaced people moving to other parks and streets in the city. The governor’s office did not respond to questions about why state funding was not offered to house those displaced by Operation SAFE in Tulsa.

Communication between Key to Home and the governor’s office began around the time Operation SAFE was in Tulsa, according to a Key to Home spokesperson and the governor’s office. At the same time, shelters and other service providers were holding meetings to form a plan in case Operation SAFE came to Oklahoma City. 

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt said he viewed the state as any other property owner. He said he doesn’t view the state’s clearance of homeless camps as making the city “safe.” 

“I don’t even know where that comes from,” he said. 

“They came to us as a property owner, and we have property owners come to us all the time seeking assistance with the removal of encampments on their property,” Holt said  “So they came to us a few weeks ago, and we’re like, ‘Hey, we have a program for that. We do this all the time, and it’s called Key to Home.'”

Key to Home has housed at least 446 people since it launched its rehousing initiative in September 2023 and says 92% of those housed have not returned to homelessness. Outreach workers typically take four to six weeks to clear a single encampment and connect individuals with housing. That process was expedited for Operation SAFE by immediately transporting individuals to shelters.

The situation in Oklahoma City isn’t how service providers would have liked to clear encampments, said Brittni Kelly, night shelter manager for City Care. But it’s better than how the operation panned out in Tulsa, where providers received little notice and there was no plan for those displaced, Kelly said.

Tulsa Day Center CEO Mack Haltom said Tulsa’s already full shelters saw an influx of need after Operation SAFE ended in the city. He’s preparing to fundraise to cover the costs of replacing items lost in the sweeps, like personal identification cards and birth certificates, he said. He was surprised to hear the state is negotiating plans to pay housing costs for those displaced by Operation SAFE in Oklahoma City.

“If that’s the case, then why not Tulsa?” he said. “There again, Tulsa was left out.”

People are already rebuilding camps in Tulsa in the areas cleared by Operation SAFE, said Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado during an interim study last month. 

“Yes, it moved those people out. But to where?” Regalado said during the hearing. “We have overflowing shelters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So those encampments are slowly trickling back.”

Madison Newberry, Community Resource Coordinator for City Care, said she’s grateful providers in Oklahoma City knew of Operation SAFE moving in ahead of time and were able to coordinate a response. But encampment sweeps of this nature can always be traumatizing, Newberry said.

A couple among those displaced by Operation SAFE had been sleeping under the I-35 underpass. They consider themselves married, Newberry said, and are used to sleeping side-by-side, but the shelter has separate dorms for men and women.  

People displaced by Operation SAFE in Oklahoma City slept on plastic-covered mattresses in one of the shelter’s hallways. Shelter staff had placed the couple’s mats directly on either side of the hallway door dividing the men’s and women’s dorms so they could talk to one another until bedtime and sleep as close as possible, even as a barrier stood between them. They told Newberry they struggled to sleep. 

“There’s a lot of loss that’s wrapped up in this,” Newberry said. “We try to meet that loss with hope, but there’s only so much that we can do when you’re in a situation like this.”