This story is featured in the spring edition of OU Daily's magazine. The magazine can be found on racks around campus and online at the end of February.
Gathering supplies, Norman volunteers headed into rain-soaked streets to conduct Cleveland County’s annual point-in-time count aiming to gather survey data on those experiencing homelessness.
Starting at 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 25, volunteers met with those experiencing homelessness to learn more about their age, gender and how long they’ve been without a home.
Point-in-time counts are used to identify gaps in services provided to people experiencing homelessness in cities across the U.S. and determine the amount of federal resources provided to the county.
Many Norman service providers have recognized an increase in the population of people experiencing homelessness since 2014 and said there are many misconceptions about homelessness, its causes and what can be done to help. Homelessness has been a recent topic of conversation in community Facebook groups, city council meetings and more as the city grapples with how to address it and how best to serve the population and Norman at large.
Some residents blame people experiencing homelessness for rising crime rates. Some residents and council members want to address the issue through a new shelter, but to no avail.
These issues and the increased debate in Norman isn’t caused by homelessness itself, according to April Doshier, executive director of Food and Shelter, a homelessness outreach organization. She said it is an issue of poverty, mental health and a lack of humanity and awareness.
“Homelessness is rising everywhere, literally everywhere,” Doshier said. “Systems are being saturated. I mean we (at A Friend’s House) have 52 beds. They're full every single night. We're turning away dozens and dozens of people who want to get inside. … We're kind of at a crisis in this country, and it's not just a Norman crisis. It's an everywhere crisis.”
The number of people experiencing homelessness has grown since 2022. According to a CBS news article, over 650,000 people nationally experienced homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12% rise from 2022. The article also stated that homelessness increased by nearly 11% among individuals, 7.4% among veterans and 15.5% among families with children in 2023.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness found that in Oklahoma there are 3,871 people homeless on a given night. The organization also found that homelessness and poverty are linked, given that when economic instability increases, so does the risk of homelessness.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 37.9 million Americans were living in poverty in 2022, accounting for 11.5% of the population.
“They're seniors, they're people with disabilities, they're single moms,” Doshier said. “The rising cost of everything is not keeping up with the amount of money that people make.”
Many of the reasons for homelessness, as recorded by the point-in-time count volunteers, were due to upticks in housing costs and mental illness. Other reasons included finances, substance use, domestic violence and lack of legal resources to deal with landlords.
Since 2014, the point-in-time counts found increases in those experiencing homelessness in the Norman and Oklahoma metropolitan area, according to Linn Blohm, executive director of Thunderbird Clubhouse, an organization dedicated to providing resources for adults living with mental illness.
“With the high cost of living, we just aren't sure what (the point-in-time count is) going to bring,” Blohm said. “We know more people are out on the streets (and) more people are experiencing homelessness for the first time.”
The cost of living in Norman has risen over the years, according to Blohm. Compared to Oklahoma City, Norman’s cost of housing is approximately 38% higher, according to Forbes’ cost of living calculator as of early February.
In Norman, the cost of buying and renting housing is 20% higher than the state average and 14% lower than the national average, according to RentCafe. The cost of utilities is 1% lower in Norman than Oklahoma’s average, but food costs are 7% higher than the state average and 1% higher than the national average.
“Folks who are out on the streets and sleeping outside, they may not have the financial, mental or physical capability of doing better for themselves in that moment,” Blohm said. “But they don't necessarily want to be outside. There's this element of some people thinking people want to be homeless or they use the system to stay homeless. Everybody that I talked to that's on the streets, they want a warm place to sleep, they want to be housed. They just have barriers and other things keeping them from being housed at this moment.”
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data from December indicates that the overall rise in homelessness, especially first-time homelessness, is due to sharp changes in the rental housing market and the loss of pandemic programs focused on preventing evictions and housing loss.
Kara Fritts, a recovery support specialist and outreach employee for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, said many people believe that substance abuse is the number one cause of homelessness. However, homelessness is a combination of many different factors, a primary one being trauma.
Fritts said in her experience, trauma, traumatic brain injury and mental illness, which may then turn some to substance abuse, were the primary causes of chronic homelessness. Chronic homelessness is when a person experiences homelessness for at least a year while struggling with a disabling condition such as mental illness, substance abuse or a physical disability.
“Everybody, I think, has gone through something, of course, but the chronic homeless in our community that I personally have worked with have gone through a substantial amount of trauma and not all of them have chosen to use substance with them.”
Fritts said there are many great mental health resources in Norman, including the Continuum of Care, numbers to call or text, Red Rock Behavioral Health Services and Griffin Memorial Hospital.
The Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse announced in September the construction of a behavioral health hospital on the Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City campus, which will replace Griffin Memorial Hospital as the state’s primary mental health hospital.
“There could always be a need for people to help and I don't think you need to be at an agency or have any type of even a title, … especially within the community,” Fritts said. “That's the most important part. There doesn't need to be a separation between the unhoused and the housed. I mean, these people already are members of our community.”
A plate of food is handed from a volunteer to a Food and Shelter resident on Nov. 20, 2017.
Food and Shelter is a nonprofit in Norman that provides meals and operates A Friend’s House, an overnight shelter. A Friend’s House opened a little over a year ago and has since provided over 500 people with at least one night of shelter, according to Doshier.
Doshier said the reason Food and Shelter opened A Friend’s House was the need for more shelter for people experiencing homelessness in Norman.
She witnessed this need firsthand when she arrived at A Friend’s House one cold day on her way to a lunch meeting and saw a group of people lined up at the door. When she asked why they were there, as the shelter didn’t open until 5 p.m., one told her that all he could think about was if he didn’t line up then, he would have to sleep outside.
“His sole focus while being homeless was, ‘Where am I going to sleep at night?’” Doshier said. “That really jarred me, because I thought that there's just no way to get out of that situation if your sole focus is surviving night-to-night-to-night.”
Ward 7 Councilmember Stephen Tyler Holman, who has served on city council for over a decade, said he has also noticed the rise in homeless populations over the years.
As a whole, Norman’s population has grown by over 18,000 people over the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In Cleveland County, the 2023 point-in-time count found that there were 213 total persons experiencing homelessness. Of that number, 30 were found to be experiencing chronic homelessness.
According to the 2023 point-in-time count data, the total number of unhoused persons and those seeking emergency shelter or traditional housing in Cleveland County increased in 2016 and following a dip, has been steadily rising since 2021. Blohm attributes the increases in unhoused populations to an increase in housing costs.
Holman said rent in Norman is growing at an increasingly fast rate. The annual percentage increase since 2023 was 18% for a studio apartment, 1% for a one-bedroom apartment and 9% for a two-bedroom apartment, according to data from Rent as of January.
In September, the median rent for all bedrooms and property types in Norman was $1,300, according to Zillow. The median rent for the 16 cities that will have universities in the SEC next year was $1,621. In 12 of the cities, the median rent was more expensive than in Norman.
Norman residents can use Section 8 vouchers, an assistance program that provides rent subsidies, but many say the process leaves them to find a home with little help. The voucher grants 120 days to find a property, allowing for two 30-day extensions. If they fail to secure housing before the expiration of these extensions, Normanites have to restart the process.
According to Redfin, in December, the price of homes in Oklahoma were up 5.1% compared to last year.
“There's a gold rush of sorts, of people coming in from out of Oklahoma and buying up real estate, then raising the rents,” Holman said. “More and more Oklahomans, since wages have not risen in Oklahoma, are having a harder and harder time keeping the housing they have or finding new housing, if they lose the housing they have.”
Doshier said there is a nationwide need to address the poverty crisis. In Norman, Doshier has noticed a push for more affordable housing, which she said would greatly benefit the city.
“Definitely, we have to address what it costs to live,” Doshier said. “I think that the issue that people are so upset about when they go to city council meetings is having to see people sleeping outside with their shopping carts. And it's a distressful thing, whether you're somebody like me who sees it and says, ‘This is a shame on our city that we allow people to sleep like this,’ or you're somebody who says, ‘This is bad for business.’”
Norman City Council has debated locations, funding and building of new shelters and affordable housing across the city. However, no solution has been accepted and questions remain unanswered.
In April 2022, city council suggested moving the emergency homeless shelter into an abandoned Griffin Memorial Hospital building. Holman said residents resisted the move since it was too close to Le Monde International School, a public charter school in Norman.
In May 2022, the city of Norman announced that the emergency shelter on East Comanche Street would close on June 27 after the landlord decided not to renew the lease.
In January 2023, city council approved an affordable housing project and zoning efforts for a new student housing complex, The Verve, on Classen Boulevard near the Jimmie Austin Golf Club. This complex will be built where the OU Motel is currently located, which is commonly used as an affordable housing complex.
PIT count surveyors at George M. Sutton Wilderness Park on Jan. 25.
In May, city council discussed the next steps for the city in developing affordable housing at the intersection of Oakhurst Avenue and Imhoff Road, a project funded by the American Rescue Plan Act.
In August, the city planning commission did not recommend rezoning for A Friend's House, which would have relocated the shelter from 109 W. Gray St. to 718 N. Porter Ave. This was due to resident concerns that the move would harm businesses and reputation in the area.
In November, ONE Norman, a task force meant to help Norman develop a long-term comprehensive plan to improve infrastructure, quality of life and housing, formed a partnership with nonprofit CivicCon to address affordable housing, following results of Norman’s quality of life survey.
“Every solution we (in city council) propose is met with a no and then there's no solution offered,” Holman said. “It's like: ‘We don't like what solutions you guys are coming up with. We don't have any solutions to offer, either. We just don't like what you guys are doing.’ So it's extremely frustrating to deal with that type of attitude and misinformation and lack of humanity.”
At recent city council meetings, several Norman residents have expressed frustration with the current state of homelessness in Norman and blamed recent crimes on those experiencing homelessness.
“My rights are being taken away. I no longer feel safe in Norman, in my neighborhood. I’ve given up running, I don’t want to walk alone and I don’t dare go to a park at all,” Chelsey Gravel, a resident who frequently speaks at council meetings about the unhoused population in Norman, said during a council meeting on May 23.
Doshier said evidence does not support Norman residents’ claims that homelessness leads to higher crime rates, and the real problem is an ongoing systemic issue.
Many residents are concerned that the Norman Police Department is understaffed and losing potential officers to other Oklahoma cities. These concerns are in light of the crime residents attribute to the homeless population.
In November, a Scratch Kitchen employee was stabbed outside of the restaurant in downtown Norman.
Following the incident, Scratch Kitchen’s owner, Brady Sexton, wrote in a Facebook post that the suspect was a person experiencing homelessness. Sexton also wrote that he recognizes the efforts by organizations advocating for Norman’s homeless population, but the burden shouldn’t fall on them and instead should be the city council’s responsibility.
According to NPD, the recent findings of crime related to Norman’s homeless population from Jan. 1 to Aug. 10, 2023, showed that 70 people were arrested from Food and Shelter, while A Friend's Place saw 20 arrests. A Friend's Place therefore accounted for 0.61% of total arrests within the city.
NPD Major Jamie Shattuck said he has seen many of those experiencing homelessness suffer from a lack of mental health and substance abuse care.
According to 2022 national data, Oklahoma ranks 28th in access to mental health care, a ranking which considers insurance, access to treatment, quality and cost of insurance, access to special education and workforce availability.
Shattuck said he noticed an increase in calls about people experiencing homelessness over several years, although these are mostly regarding individuals simply being on the street.
“It's not a crime to be homeless,” Shattuck said. “It's not uncommon to have your stuff on Main Street and walk down Main Street. We get calls on people like that from time to time, … so the best thing that you can do is try to educate people.”
Education about laws concerning a person’s rights and what experiencing homelessness means within a city, Shattuck said, is what people need when it comes to understanding the issue and policing it.
“We're going to treat unhoused people exactly the same way as we would anybody else,” Shattuck said. “We can't make exceptions there because everybody has inherent value. Right? Even people who are in a bad situation.”
Doshier said the key to working toward solving the crisis of homelessness is to look past the negative stereotypes and to take into account how they got there and how certain life traumas may have redirected their lives.
“Every single person here, regardless of how they got here, were born a human being just like every one of us, and that's the thing I wish more people would talk about,” Doshier said.
OU Daily's spring magazine:
This story was edited by Peggy Dodd, Anusha Fathepure, Ismael Lele and Karoline Leonard. Grace Rhodes, Nikkie Aisha and Mary Ann Livingood copy edited this story.
