By Fox23.com News Staff
TULSA, Okla. — Safe Move Tulsa said they’ve closed two encampments and helped 30 people experiencing homelessness access housing over the past 30 days.
“We are here today to announce the closure of two encampments here in Tulsa,” said Mark Smith, the CEO at Housing Solutions. “One here behind the Lowe’s off 71st and another location near McDonald’s off 129th South. Today, we’re talking about the individuals who were living here who have now been able to move into housing and now the space is closed for camping and some remediation is going on. Over the two encampments, we’ve been able to help 30 people who were living at these sites move into housing and be able to provide them long-term support moving forward.”
Smith explained how the team organized the closure of the encampments while also ensuring they took care of the people living there.
“We work with outreach to identify locations that are a public safety, public health challenge where we know there’s a vulnerable population experiencing homelessness. We’ll send outreach out over the course of a week to engage with every single person who’s living at that site, identify them, confirm that they sleep there regularly, get their name and from there start working on the closure and housing process. We’ll offer every single person who is living there a pathway out of homelessness. We offer them case management support as they move into housing through YWCA.”
At the first encampment near Lowe’s, Smith said they were able to move three people into housing and at the encampment by McDonald’s, 30 people were able to be moved into housing.
Smith said outreach will continue to work with and provides services to the five individuals who chose to voluntarily leave the encampments instead of moving into housing.
“The community effort here has been really impressive. It’s taken a lot of community partners…to be able to identify the individuals here, what assistance they would need, identify any concerns or issues at the site, working with private property and public property and to be able to then find locations for those individuals to be able to live. Working with landlords and property owners all across the city to find a place for those individuals to live, so it’s a whole effort. I think what we’re most proud of is to be able to close two sites with 30 people getting housed over 30 days, which is something that we haven’t been able to do with that speed and that scale in our community before.”
In the future, Smith said Housing Solutions will continue to identify encampments and work to help those living at them access housing.
