'Not just counting people.' Volunteers comb freezing OKC to gather key data on homeless

The woman carried a plastic storage tub as she walked along the side of an Oklahoma City highway in freezing temperatures about 4:15 a.m. Thursday.

She was on her way home — to a tent tucked deep within the trees near a creek off the side of the road.

Lt. David Dale, Oklahoma City Police Department's homeless outreach team supervisor, spoke to her first on Thursday during the 2023 Point in Time census and survey of people experiencing homelessness. Then Point in Time team members Alex McGowan-Rayburn and Karen Martinez struck up a conversation with the woman and learned that she began abusing drugs shortly after her father died.

"She said she just stopped caring," McGowan-Rayburn said.

Homeless Alliance Executive Director Dan Straughan said the information gleaned during such visits serves several purposes. He said the census and survey organized by the city of Oklahoma City and the Homeless Alliance is required at least once every two years of communities that receive U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding. Oklahoma City typically conducts its survey each year.

Straughan said the Point in Time is more than a population count. He said the "good data" from the survey also informs local service agencies who help people experiencing homelessness.

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"We're not just counting people, we're asking the questions 'What was it that caused your homelessness? What services did you need to prevent your homelessness that you weren't able to access or what services do you need right now to get back into housing?'" Straughan said. "Then we, as a community, can use that information to develop new programs, to make current programs bigger, and to address gaps in services in the community."

That was why 19 teams made up of people from various homeless service providers spread out into the city on Thursday to visit places like shelters, encampments, meal programs, libraries, churches talk to people experiencing homelessness.

Cale Powers, Veterans Affairs homeless coordinator, led the team that included Dale, McGowan-Rayburn, Karen Martinez and several others. The group spent about an hour and a half in the area where they met the first woman Thursday morning. Powers and Dale found a man sleeping in a tent not too far from where the woman lived. Powers said the man told him that he'd been homeless for about 10 years and he'd been living near the creek for about a year.

Not too far away, the group encountered a woman and two men sleeping in a van. Clipboard in hand, Powers and McGowan-Rayburn spoke to the three and learned that the woman avoided shelters because they made her anxious. The group parked the van and slept in it rather than going to a shelter, despite the cold.

Powers said he gave the three bus passes, fast food gift cards and some dog treats for their pet pit bull terrier.

The team visited several other places: an overpass where they found visible signs that someone had been sheltering there, behind brick partitions and building alcoves and in dark corners of parking lots. A man found living in one parking lot did not want to answer questions. Similarly, a man sleeping underneath a folded cardboard box and a blanket outside a store also declined to talk.

"You come across people, and it made me aware that many of us are just two or three unlucky circumstances away from being homeless," Powers said.

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A look at the numbers

The 2022 Point in Time survey found 1,339 people experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City on the day of the count in 2022. This was a decrease of 234 people from the previous count, but Straughan said this didn't mean homelessness had decreased. He said he thinks last year's count was lower than the year before because it was conducted during icy weather in March, when many people likely sought refuge at local shelters. Also, he said COVID-19 case numbers were up at that time.

Results of the 2023 count will be compiled, analyzed and released later this year, and Straughan said he thinks they will show there has been an increase in people experiencing homelessness compared to 2022.

"I could be wrong, but we saw from recent data that Oklahoma City had the fastest-rising rent of any large city in the country," he said. "And then we've seen eviction court dockets set records since March of last year. Not all of those people become homeless, but some of them do, and that drives our numbers."

With this in mind, Meghan Mueller, Homeless Alliance associate executive director, said a question was added to this year's Point in Time survey to find out if an individual's homelessness was a result of eviction.

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Straughan said he was pleased to learn that most people agreed to share their information when approached by the teams.

"This is my 17th Point in Time, and I'm continually surprised by that," he said. "I mean, you're waking people up at 4 o'clock in the morning to take a fairly lengthy survey in return for a bus pass, and people are very willing to do that for you. It reinforces the idea that they're not homeless people — homelessness doesn't define them. They're just people ― brothers and sisters, moms and dads, sons and daughters — that are in a temporary rough patch, and they behave pretty much like you and I do."

Meanwhile, Hailey Drylie-Junker, who works with the Homeless Alliance's Curbside Chronicle street newspaper, said she was somewhat surprised that she and other members of Powers' team didn't find more people Thursday morning, but she said teams also would be going out throughout the day.

"I hope this means that people are at shelters because it's so cold," she said.

She and Powers said the value of the annual count and survey was immeasurable.

"These numbers are so so important for us in terms of how many vouchers we get for housing and how many resources we get for X, Y, and Z, so, it's great to do it and this year was no different," Powers said.

Drylie-Junker agreed.

"I'm glad that we are here to share their stories," she said. "We get to see the faces and names behind the statistics. We're breaking stigmas. We're here to meet some neighbors."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Point in Time team counts homeless in Oklahoma City, gathers data