With the funding contract for Norman’s only overnight emergency shelter set to expire in March, homelessness advocates described the impact of its upcoming closure.
Friends House, located at 109 W. Gray St, is a city-funded overnight emergency shelter operated by Food & Shelter. The Norman City Council voted to approve the temporary shelter in October, citing a need for housing amid extreme winter weather after the previous shelter at 325 Comanche St. closed last June.
Ward 4 Councilmember Helen Grant said a new contract would have to be brought to the council before it could vote to extend the lease for Friends House. However, the shelter has historically been grant funded, which would be difficult to do on a lease-to-lease model because it's not locked in, and grants require certainty.
Food & Shelter provides food, emergency shelter and rehousing for people experiencing homelessness in Norman.
According to Darrel Pyle, Norman city manager, Friends House will remain open through the middle of March.
“It's the first time we've operated an emergency shelter like this in our existence in our 40 years here in Norman,” said April Doshier, director of Food & Shelter. “Friends House is a men's and women's dorm-style shelter where people can stay until they have access to a place of their own.”
Doshier said it can be very difficult for one agency to shelter so many people in extreme weather, citing Sunday’s extreme weather threats, including an EF2 tornado and damaging winds. The warming shelter houses a maximum of 40 people. However, during severe weather, the facility can shelter 52.
“We are really at the precipice of a crisis where … the affordability of living in Norman no longer exists and people are being priced out of places that they've lived,” Doshier said.
Last month, the Norman City Council voted to replace the OU Motel, which has long served as an affordable housing complex in Norman, with a new student housing complex.
Heidi Smith, director of operations at Thunderbird Clubhouse, said some of the effects of homelessness in Norman are the increased costs of health care systems and municipal policing.
Thunderbird Clubhouse is a nonprofit contracted with the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and works alongside the Cleveland County Continuum of Care. Their mission is to help create new futures for people with mental illness through community.
In October, Kevin Foster, Norman chief of police, said a warming shelter for people experiencing homelessness would decrease the number of calls the Norman Police Department responds to regarding those in need of housing.
Heidi said justice involvement for people experiencing homelessness adds pressure to already under-resourced systems. That involvement can then prevent people from finding rentals due to criminal history, adding greater barriers to housing stability, she said.
“If we don't address homelessness and affordable housing, we are ignoring the glaringly obvious feedback from our community that they want us to do that, and I think consistently you see that conversation happening.” Grant said.
Steve Lett, dispatch driver for Norman’s Care-A-Vans, said housing should be offered to everyone and shouldn’t be determined by the amount of money a person makes for themselves or other people.
Lett said the nonprofit industrial complex allocates tax dollars originally meant for funding social services and pulls it away from the state to fund projects for capitalist philanthropists who have no interest in solving these issues because their wealth is predicated on it.
“We need to not make housing a commodity,” Lett said. “In the sense of housing, it should just be something that we offer to everyone and it's not dependent on your capacity to make money or make wealth for others and to earn a wage in order to live.”
This story was edited by Alexia Aston, Karoline Leonard and Jazz Wolfe. Francisco Gutierrez and Alexandra Powell-Lorentzatos copy edited this story.
