Key to Home Partnership secures housing for 17 people living under I-44 bridge

Oklahoma City’s Key to Home Partnership recently provided housing for 17 people living in an encampment under a bridge at I-44 and Pennsylvania Avenue. Several nonprofit organizations make up the partnership. Their goal is to find stable housing for 500 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness by 2025.

Staff from Key to Home Partnership, Mental Health Association and Hope Community Services provided outreach and engagement to those living in the encampment. City Rescue Mission secured apartments for them while Focus on Home furnished each unit with necessities. The Oklahoma City Housing Authority (OCHA) is the operating partner for the MAPS 4 homelessness project. OCHA officials provided housing vouchers to those in the bridge encampment and helped them secure the apartments.

Each newly housed person has a case manager provided by the Homeless Alliance, City Care, Catholic Charities and NorthCare, who will help them stabilize and recover over the next year.

Now that everyone at the encampment has somewhere to live, the camp has been closed. Oklahoma City, in partnership with the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, will provide maintenance while the outreach team continues to engage people in the area.

“Key to Home Partnership is working to solve homelessness one encampment at a time through housing and case management,” Key to Home Implementation Manager Lindsay Cates said. “Charitable contributions from our community are critical to making this model work.”

People can donate at keytohomeokc.org.

Key to Home Partnership

Key to Home is a public-private partnership of over 40 agencies. It was launched in April to prevent and end homelessness in OKC.

The Key to Home Partnership’s action plan has four goals for 2023-2025: create a new governance system; improve infrastructure and capacity; reduce youth homelessness by 25% through rehousing or diverting; and reduce chronic unsheltered homelessness by 75%.

On any given night, about 1,400 people experience homelessness in Oklahoma City. Of them, about 500 are sleeping outside. Several complex factors contribute to homelessness including low wages, lack of affordable housing, rising eviction rates and inflation.

MAPS 4 included $55.7 million for affordable housing. The project aims to expand the network of housing for people experiencing homelessness by nearly 2,000 housing units, including the construction of 150 workforce homes in high-cost areas. The initiative has the potential to leverage more than $400 million in additional housing funding from other sources.