It was a muggy summer night when 17-year-old Jae quietly grabbed their black cat named Baby, careful not to wake their parents, and ran.
Their friend was waiting in a car parked across the cul-de-sac in suburban Edmond. Jae threw open the passenger door, hopped in and yelled “Drive!”
They were sick from nerves as the car peeled away, fearful their father would be following close behind.
Jae, who uses they/them pronouns, said they experienced emotional and physical abuse at home. The Frontier is only using Jae’s first name due to safety concerns. Jae said they began having thoughts of suicide at home, and felt their only option to protect their mental health was to leave.
“There was a split decision that night,” said Jae, now 21. “It was either I stay here and I end up dead, or I leave.”
There were 450 unaccompanied youth under age 24 who were experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma in 2024, a 39% increase since 2019, according to federal housing department data. The figure is likely an undercount because it only includes people sleeping outside or at shelters, and not those couch surfing or staying in motels.
There is not enough housing or funding to combat the growing problem.
Oklahoma had only 329 shelter or housing beds for youth in 2024, according to the most recent federal housing department data. The state lost 58 beds for unhoused youth from the previous year.
Some Oklahoma programs have lost federal grant funding, making it harder for youth like Jae to exit homelessness.
Growing demand and dwindling funding
Few housing options exist for youth experiencing homelessness. The state Office of Juvenile Affairs provides funding to 21 organizations with emergency youth shelters in just 20 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties. Some youth travel several hours to access services. And funding is never enough to fully meet the need.
Meanwhile, shelters told The Frontier they’re seeing more youth who are staying for longer periods because there are not enough options for permanent housing.
“We’ve had minors celebrate two Christmases with us before,” said Rachel Bradley, executive director of Sisu Youth Services, a shelter in Oklahoma City. “There’s just not enough options for them.”
Several shelters and housing programs for youth in Oklahoma City and Tulsa were full or above capacity during an annual survey of people experiencing homelessness in January.
Pivot, a youth shelter in Oklahoma City, has 350 people on the waitlist for one of the organization’s 41 tiny homes. And 366 youth in Tulsa were waiting for housing placements in May, according to the nonprofit Housing Solutions Tulsa.
“There aren’t the options available that there were 20-some years ago,” said David Grewe, executive director of Youth Services of Tulsa, a nonprofit serving unhoused and at-risk youth. “Higher education has become more unattainable because of costs, housing continues to go up and living wages are going up at the same rate. So young people are experiencing more challenges than they have in the past securing housing.”
Tulsa shelters are expecting an influx of 150 youth if Job Corps centers nationwide shut down after an order from the Trump Administration. Oklahoma’s three Jobs Corps centers provide youth ages 16 to 24 with education, job training and housing. A federal judge blocked the order last month, pausing the closures for now.
“There’s no way those young people can be absorbed into the system right now as it is,” Grewe said. Already, over 300 youth are waiting for housing or shelter placements in Tulsa.
It’s harder for nonprofits to get funding because of growing demand for a federal grant for transitional housing for youth. The federal Administration for Children and Families, which administers the grants, received more than 200 applications each of the last two years the money was made available, an agency spokesperson said. Funding for the program was only enough to support about 85 new projects each year, according to the spokesperson.
The grant previously paid for 16 to 20 transitional housing beds for three years at Sisu. But Sisu didn’t get approved for more funding last year, despite having the same score on its application as last time. Those beds are now gone.
Payne County Youth Services in Stillwater also had to cut back services after it didn’t receive a Transitional Living Program grant last year.
The organization puts youth up in an apartment paid for with the Transitional Living Program grant. The program provides youth with counseling and teaches them life skills.
Payne County Youth Services typically houses around 10 youth in the transitional living program each year. The loss of the Transitional Living Program grant reduced that number this year to two. The organization won’t be able to fund any of those services if it doesn’t get new funding soon, said Janet Fultz, executive director of Payne County Youth Services.
The organization is currently using federal funds administered by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce to house two youth, but that money will only last through September. Fultz is working to find the youth alternative housing, but rental prices in the college town continue to soar above what they can afford.
Federal grant managers told providers that new funding applications would be released in April, but that didn’t happen. Applications for Transitional Living Program grants finally opened on July 9, giving providers just 14 days to submit them, instead of the two months they had to apply last year.
Federal officials removed “ensuring equity” from the list of scoring criteria this year and banned using the grant money for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The Administration for Children and Families anticipates awarding just 67 grants, down from 85 during the last application cycle. An agency spokesperson said the maximum award amount is increasing from $250,000 per award to $350,000, which will reduce the number of recipients.
Money from the federal Victims of Crime Act that funds some services at Payne County Youth Services has also plummeted recently from $312,343 during the 2020 fiscal year to $78,691 this year, Fultz said. The Office for Victims of Crime, under the U.S. Department of Justice, oversees the program, which is largely funded through monetary penalties paid by federal offenders. The program’s funding has declined over the years as fewer deposits are made into the federal Crime Victims Fund. .
Altogether, Fultz said the organization’s budget is projected to shrink this fiscal year by around $400,000 from various funding cuts and grant losses. Fultz said they’ve turned away seven youth in the past six months alone because there wasn’t enough funding to assist them. A decline in funding would mean they’d have to turn away even more, Fultz said.
“The demand is going up significantly for services and the money is disappearing,” Fultz said. “That’s kind of a perfect storm.”
Nowhere to turn
After 18 months of couch surfing, never staying in one place for too long out of fear their parents would find them, Jae has finally found some stability with the Sisu transitional living program. The organization pays for an apartment for Jae in Oklahoma City.
“Sisu saved my life,” Jae said. “Without Sisu, I would be on the streets.”
The walls of Jae’s Oklahoma City apartment are mostly bare. A pinned blanket acts as a makeshift curtain on the lone window in the living room, where Baby perches bathing in a sliver of afternoon sunlight. Artwork leans against the TV stand and a violin rests in the corner. Jae’s played for years, but hasn’t been able to practice much recently. The walls are too thin, they said.
It’s home for now, but Jae can’t stay there much longer. The federal grant that funds the program only pays for up to two years of housing, and Jae’s time is running out. They have to find somewhere else to live by August or risk falling back into homelessness.
A Sisu case manager meets with Jae each week to help them find housing and employment.
They need a job to get an apartment, but Jae’s epilepsy and heart condition limit their options, they said, since many jobs require employees to be able to lift up to 50 pounds or to stand on their feet for eight hours a day.
Jae estimates they’ve applied for over 60 jobs in the past few weeks, but has only landed three interviews. In an ideal world, Jae would like to work for a nonprofit and help children who have experienced abuse. They’re currently the communications director for the Oklahoma City Youth Action Board, a coalition of youth with lived experience with homelessness who advocate for policies and initiatives to improve the youth homelessness system. But the Youth Action Board’s funding ran out in April, and Jae’s position is currently unpaid.
Jae hoped to get Section 8 rental assistance to help afford their own place. But lack of federal funding has recently forced local housing authorities in Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Norman to close applications for section 8 rental assistance vouchers. Local housing officials said they’re not sure when applications will reopen.
Pivot has the tiny homes that youth can stay in until they turn 25, but Jae said they wouldn’t be able to keep their cat, and the waitlist is too long, anyway. They then turned to the housing programs at Hope Community Services, but the next day learned the organization planned to end housing services because it didn’t have enough funding to pay for them.
Jae said they feel stuck.
“There’s nowhere else for me to go,” Jae said.