The group of roughly two dozen service agencies known collectively as A Way Home for Tulsa is looking to build on its success.
The collective has housed 828 homeless Tulsans — 641 veterans and 187 chronically homeless — since 2015, more than double its original goal.
"Our neighbors who are in need, we just needed to give them a little bit of help, and so now those folks who were once homeless are living in safe, secure housing in Tulsa and they're still able to be a part of our community," said past A Way Home for Tulsa Chair Jeff Jaynes.
The new goal is making homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring.
"I think we'll always have people who become homeless, but our goal and our mission is to intervene quickly with those folks and not let them languish in homelessness, not let them ever become chronic," said A Way Home for Tulsa Chair Sandra Lewis.
The federal definition of a chronically homeless person is a person with a disability who has been continuously homeless a year or more, or at least four times in the past three years.
Members want to improve already successful practices, like creating a by-name list of homeless Tulsans, going out to find people in need of housing, and building relationships with landlords throughout the city so formerly homeless people aren't clustered together in one community.
Lewis said effectively ending homelessness will take everyone.
"We're a village, and let's come together and help these folks because they're vulnerable. And many of them haven't lived independently in a long time, and so it's a little intimidating for them and they need a lot of support," Lewis said.
A City of Tulsa pilot program modeled after the A Better Way initiative in Albuquerque, N.M., is expected to help. It offers panhandlers a wage for picking up trash or other work to improve the appearance of city streets. At a free lunch break, they're connected with service organizations.
Tulsa's version should begin by Jan. 1.
