City of Oklahoma City Mayor & Council, 15 Feb 2016

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From YouTube: From City Hall - Ward 6

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Oklahoma City Ward 6 Councilwoman Meg Salyer discusses the history of and the present efforts being undertaken to help the city's homeless population with founders of the Homeless Alliance.

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I'm meg salyer and I'd like to welcome you to the ward 6 councilor show today.

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We have two of our greatest corporate civic leaders here in the community.

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Frankly, I worked with temptation management. You manage an awful lot of.

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Money for folks, then, do such good work in the community for a very grateful in.

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Our dear friend and strong, who runs the homeless alliance today, I wanted to talk.

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About the homeless alliance, its origins of how it came to be in the city and.

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Then transition a little bit into all of the great work that we're doing, because.

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I I have discovered, through some conversation over the last couple of.

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Months that I don't think you're sittin citizenry at large is as aware of all of.

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The fantastic work that's going on to help those populations of people in our.

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City will you need so frank? This was kind of unusual coming together of a few.

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Like mines, was it back in 2002, nick noble from oklahoma city, with the nobel.

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Foundation in order more myself and bob spanks, who was then the executive.

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Director of united way had lunch at lunch box and we discussed how we were.

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Doing a poor job collaborating and funding agencies that serve the homeless.

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We were barely enabling people to to maintain their homelessness, but not.

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Anything beyond that, so we put together a group of people we traveled throughout.

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The united states, looking at how other cities address homelessness, we came back.

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And we're very fortunate to be able to higher than and he became our first.

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Executive director, first employee first employer also remember the exact your.

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Day in 2004 and we began, the very first thing we did is got all the homeless.

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Shelters to sit down together and develop minimum standards that that's.

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The first time, but never also.

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And we'd we develop minimum standards, we were instrumental and helping one.

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Particular gentleman find something else to do. Besides run a shelter here in town.

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We were able to identify and help hire a person who has taken that shelter over.

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Before before the change, the health department was constantly closing them.

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Down it was a horrible situation, and now it's one of our better shelters in town.

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And we have so many may think it's important to say right up front that we.

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Do have a very large group of very successful and helpful agencies.

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Soldiers gathered around the community is about a hundred government.

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Faith-Based and nonprofit agencies in oklahoma city that are working with the.

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Homeless at one level or another, including seven overnight, shelters but.

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Also, including in the dhs works with homeless people, social security, people.

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The va, where truth homeless, people to get agencies like that agencies that do.

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Substance abuse treatment, mental health care, of course, agencies that do housing.

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From the city's perspective, we are so fortunate to have this nonprofit sector.

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Her social services based agency that will help fill our gap because the.

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Funding needed them, but yeah and handmade why we started was to get all.

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Those people together talking to each other.

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Working collaboratively and I think from 2000 to 2016 I can give you the exact.

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Numbers, but the state of homelessness in our city has gotten so much better. We.

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Have housed numerous people who will forward either living on the streets are.

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Living in shelters were working very diligently with our veterans to make.

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Sure that they are in houses and we have no authority, we have no power, but we.

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The alliance is the right word for it, because the homeless alliance is the.

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Place where everyone comes together and talks about problems, so I want to delve.

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Into that a little bit more deeply, but my recollection frank is that we had had.

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The community had had had a shelter.

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Up until about nineteen, ninety five or ninety six, and then it went away right.

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After the bombing, probably from lack of funding resources, funding issues, it was.

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Only once the alliance was created in some funding became available through.

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The neighborhood stabilization program to be able to create the campus that you.

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Now have that has a resource center on. It has had a shelter right on it and now.

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Just like to give you a little bit of history about that, we as the homeless.

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Alliance with around town trying to identify facilities that we could.

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Remodel in turn into a resource center in a day, shelter and every time we would.

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Identify a suitable place, not in my backyard. We don't want these people near.

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Us we don't want that, so we contacted the chamber of commerce and said help us.

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Help you and help our city to find a suitable location, and it was almost.

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Within a week.

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Yeah, it was that they gym counts. The city manager, then, and now being the.

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Group, that included the chamber and us and in use the city's gis software to to.

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To find westtown basically- and I think that's probably another thing that.

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People don't know so much as it's a role that the chamber would play. I think lots.

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Of people think the chamber spends all its time on big business, but they were.

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They were at the table and yes, it's important to small business and I know.

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That, frankly, you both you and andy lot of work on identifying what the cost of.

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Homelessness ways and we there's a story right and yes, we did a. We did a study in.

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Partnership with the city oakland city in the coalition to end poverty in 2010, through the total cost.

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Of homelessness, 22, oklahoma, city and and and that number was for that calendar.

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Year was 28 million dollars in in more than half of that, more than 14 million.

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Came from what we call now an obvious providers, so it's not us or salvation.

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Army year there were any of those groups. It's the police department, the fire.

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Department in emergency rooms, city, county jail.

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Track one individual kids. During the course of that study, we identified one.

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Chronically homeless me and who, during the one year of the study, costs the.

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Community $160,000 one guy and we were interviewing him, he was, he was in jail.

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And had a lot of issues and in- and I remember talking to some of the.

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Leadership of the police department and at that time captain now major mccool.

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Asked is that floyd and in fact it was fluid in into steve's than major mccool.

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Told the story of fluoride was his first arrest for bankruptcy in public drunk.

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When he first started on the forces 25 years before so if we had left floyd on.

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The street for all those 25 years, which is likely and and he was costing that.

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Mean we could have built a mansion for the absolutely in into that really.

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Spurred the community and the homeless alliance to to really look at the cost.

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Of chronic homelessness to look around the country for best practices for how.

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To fix that problem and and to to start what began as a hundred thousand homes.

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In this now journey, that's really an important conversation. I think there's.

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Been a pretty significant paradigm shift in a lot of thinking that early thinking.

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People need to get treatment, first, get sorted out and then transition into.

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Housing and I've seen this major shift to say housing first, so that you can wrap.

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Caseworker am so talk about his success. Let's we have a specific program. I know.

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For sure, and yes for for the bulk of homeless population, that housing.

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Readiness approach that that addressing issues and then moving into housing that.

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Works really well, but for chronically homeless people, people who really high.

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Barriers to housing, is it just us or can it doesn't work, it's not that it just.

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Doesn't work here that work anywhere and so in new york city they developed a.

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Philosophy called housing first, where you take those people directly off the.

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Street and without preconditions put them into housing first and then, while.

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They're, safe and warm and secure wrap them around with the services that they.

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Need to sustain their houses, would it whatever that is: employment, training, mental health care, substance, abuse treatment, primary health.

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Care provide those to them while they're in housing, and so here in oklahoma city.

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The journey home collaborative which is is facilitated by us, but it includes 40.

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Government faith-based and nonprofit agencies that we we've been very.

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Successful drastically reducing the number of chronically homeless in oklahoma city.

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With a 90% housing retention and we, we suspect, if we, if we gathered up the.

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Money to do another year, long cost of homelessness study that we price save.

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The city about six million dollars a year at a cost of a tenth of helping. So.

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Many people, so you just had what we call your point in time. Yes tell us, we have.

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Just a few minutes sure, every year that the city does a snapshot census of its.

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Homeless, population- and we just finished it the last week of january this year,.

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The numbers going to be in the neighborhood of 1,300, maybe a little.

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Lower than that that I think the the the real tale to tell us when we started in 2004 the.

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Point-In-Time count was about 2,600. Now it's half that and you know it's not a.

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Problem, you can fix with his snap your fingers as a community we're moving in.

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The right direction and I think the conversation about expanding mental.

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Health services- and I mean we know that all of these things we also have doubted.

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And all that there's some folks that just simply don't want to come off the.

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Streets, but that was a fluster we we took early on. Maybe we wanted to take.

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People into the day, shelter wherever they were, they had been drinking venues.

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And didn't matter if they weren't disruptive, we took a lot of people.

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Self-Medicate hurt either read mental health issues. We tried to reach out and.

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Touch each person that came in our door as often as they would allow us to start.

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Chipping away at the things that were causing them to be homeless, and we.

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Measured those touches every day, we measure how many referrals that they.

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They volunteered to go do if it's mental health or drug and alcohol abuse.

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Whatever we never got in a hurry, we took people where they were when we moved him.

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As far as I wanted to go- and I really can't say thank you enough for first of.

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All the foresight of the coordination, because that was definitely lacking and.

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You know we're incredibly generous community. We know that in so many ways.

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But the resources are finite in duplicative, services of this type are.

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Not not help the fact that you know everybody sit around a table by me like.

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I know that not long ago when we were anticipating some extremely cold weather.

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And we had some changes in the number of bids that were available.

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You were the convening agency that brought people into say. If we have a.

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Crisis in this community, what do we do it we address it? How do we get corporate.

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Help putting backpacks together, of which I know we had no, that is my opinion. They.

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And greatest strength is being able to get a lot of people with diverse ideas.

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And opinions to sit in and create a common.

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Solution, frank. I know you don't want me to say this, but I happen to remember.

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That the funding for that property, that is now the western campus, originated.

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From your great help, and so the city a lot of the people that he's a partner in.

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That effort in.

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Retired that debt- but this has been one of the most successful and certainly six.

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And a half years on the council, it's been one of the things that I've been most proud of is to see the great progress that we've made in this area.

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And the partnership that we all have work to do a lot more work to do when.

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You're given up yet so, thank you both for coming, and I just am grateful for.

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Every day of work, that's done.