KRMG In Depth: Hidden homelessness and the city’s efforts to address the overall problem

The call came in to the KRMG newsroom on Monday.

“People think that all homeless people are in the street,” the man told our reporter. “There’s a whole different subset of homeless people. There’s people who have a nice job, that are well-dressed, yet at the end of the night they sleep in their car because their income’s not matching the cost of living. And the reason I know that is I’m one of those people.”

[Hear the story of the fully employed homeless man in Tulsa HERE]

The conversation prompted KRMG to contact several city councilors, and in the process of speaking with District 6 Councilor Christian Bengel, we learned that he’s had personal experience that gives him perspective on the issue.

“Things didn’t work out at home, so I was out on the street the last year of high school,” Bengel told KRMG.

Despite the challenges posed, Bengel said he was determined to finish school so he could join the military, as “I wasn’t a great student, so college was not in the mix for me.”

[Hear the story of the city councilor who once experienced homelessness himself HERE]

And despite taking on those challenges and ultimately overcoming them - he still lives with the trauma of that experience to this day, he told KRMG.

“Even... almost forty years later, it’s still an embarrassment,” Bengel said.

As for the caller’s situation, Bengel says he hopes the man will reach out to him personally, and he thinks he can get him the help he needs.

He’s also supportive of the city’s 3H Task Force.

[Hear more about the city’s efforts to combat homelessness HERE]

“The three Hs stand for housing, homelessness, and mental health,” District 8 Councilor Phil Lakin told KRMG. “We assembled a task force of government officials, corporate sector individuals, and others to really walk through really just a study of what we can do in all three of these spaces.”

District 4 Councilor Laura Bellis is not a member of that task force with Lakin, but is strongly supportive of the group’s work, and of finding solutions to help Tulsans get off the streets and into permanent accommodations.

She also points out that programs designed to prevent people from getting into trouble financially may also make a difference.

“One of the things that the city is doing that I think is important is related to the work at the Financial Empowerment Center,” she told KRMG. “People are getting support when it comes to accessing resources, whether it’s like filing taxes, figuring out how to get their finances in order, getting plugged in to a quick utility or rental payment or things like that that can make a huge difference in someone maintaining housing and not ending up, you know, in their car in the first place - or having an avenue to get back into stable housing.”