TULSA, Okla. — City of Tulsa budget allocations allow work to continue within the Safe Move Tulsa housing initiative. To date, in less than a year, they've housed 665 Tulsans experiencing homelessness.
Back in February, Emily Hall, Senior Adviser on Homelessness to the mayor told 2 News that funding for this first phase of the program was expected to run out by summer 2026.
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In June, the Tulsa City Council allocated $23.5M to homeless response initiatives. Mark Smith, CEO of Housing Solutions said that funding will keep the Safe Move Tulsa work going through 2027.
“I believe about $6 million has been allocated for this year," said Smith. "We’re working with the city on some of those funding to be released and how some of that plugs in as well as some of the private partners which would allow us to maintain the capacity that we’ve built over this year and then really work towards how do we expand?"
Since it's inception, Safe Move Tulsa housed 665 Tulsans, cleaned up 12 encampments and cleared nearly 190 tons of garbage across the community. Smith said the goal is to house 1,300 people by the end of the year.
“We know that achieving this goal of 1300 people resolving homelessness is not mission accomplished, right," said Smith. "We will have a lot of more work to do. Being able to continue to scale from there is where this past year we saw the number of people experiencing homelessness plateau for the first time in five years. But we really want to bend the curve right. We want to continue to see less people sleeping outside or sleeping in shelters for very long times.”
The funding, Smith said, will not just allow them to help new people in need of the program but also keep supporting the people who came to them first.
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Another sign of progress Smith shared is that folks are beginning to seek them out to get help — versus it only being outreach work.
“When we put more resources in and we’re using those really efficiently and people see that ‘oh I’m not gonna have to wait two or three or six months,’ or 'going to a shelter means I’m also going to get help not just with a place to sleep tonight, but I can get help to get out of this situation,'" said Smith. "We’re seeing really strong engagement from people that maybe before we would think they’re not interested in services. It’s actually folks are not interested in waiting.”
To ensure they meet their goal, Smith said they are adding staff and ramping up the work their doing. He said he does believe that they'll make it to 1,300 Tulsans off the street by end of 2026.
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