Philip Busey, Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City Is Housing People From Encampments. Getting There Takes Longer Than It Should.

Street outreach workers Cryslynn Barnes and Stephanie Risenhoover describe their job as pregaming the first steps of housing — building trust, gathering documents and lowering barriers before a person experiencing homelessness ever reaches the point of signing a lease.

Jake Ramsey reports that Oklahoma City’s Key to Home initiative, a public-private collaboration involving nearly 50 organizations, has had measurable success. At one encampment at SW 21st and Western, 65 of 75 residents were housed within 30 to 60 days. Seven took 60 to 90 days because of problems during the housing voucher inspection process.

Those inspections, conducted under federal HUD standards before anyone moves in, check for a range of habitability issues including electrical safety, functioning appliances, smoke alarms, pest infestation and structural problems. Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency officials say they cannot alter the protocol. But advocates and landlords say small items, from cracked light-switch plates to missing GFCI outlets near water, can fail an inspection and delay housing by weeks while a landlord arranges repairs and schedules a re-inspection, all without rental income.

The shortage of landlords willing to accept housing vouchers compounds the problem. When a unit fails inspection, workers must either wait for repairs or find another willing landlord in a market where affordable units are scarce.

Jamie Caves, Key to Home’s strategy implementation manager, said the system cannot keep pace with the rate at which people are falling into homelessness, driven by evictions, exits from correctional facilities and young people aging out of child protective services.

Oklahoma City is developing rehabilitation incentive programs to help landlords bring aging units up to inspection standards and expand the affordable housing stock.

More worth knowing:

Governor Defends Calls to Polston Gov. Kevin Stitt defended his 16 phone calls to friend and donor Rod Polston after state grand jurors reported the evidence “deepens our concerns” about Polston’s wife’s early release from prison in February on a drunken driving offense. [The Oklahoman ▲]

Texas Taps Hamlin Daniel Hamlin, Oklahoma’s secretary of education, will be the next University of Texas College of Education dean, the university announced Monday. [Austin American-Statesman]

Oklahoma Trooper to be Nominated for ICE Post President Donald Trump said he will nominate former Oklahoma trooper Lance Schroyer to serve as the next director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. [The Oklahoman ▲]

SNAP Error Rate Increases As the State of Oklahoma stares down a deadline to lower its error rate for federal food benefits, numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show the rate has slightly increased. [KOSU]

▲=Possible paywall

The leopard darter, a small, spotted fish found nowhere on Earth except the Kiamichi and Little rivers of southeastern Oklahoma, was one of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1975.

Ciao for now,

Ted Streuli Executive Director, Oklahoma Watch tstreuli@oklahomawatch.org