LOCAL
Kimberly Marsh, The Oklahoma Eagle
Gov. Kevin Stitt used the Oklahoma Highway Patrol to remove encampments in the morning of Sept. 5. Photo: Kimberly Marsh/ The Eagle
A Way Home for Tulsa, a group focused on homelessness prevention, and other organizations responded Friday to Gov. Kevin Stitt’s use of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) to remove encampments in Tulsa on state-owned property.
In a release Thursday, Stitt announced a new initiative to clear “homeless encampments, trash, and criminal activity from state-owned property inside the city.” He said state troopers would begin offering people experiencing homelessness a ride to a treatment facility or jail if they refused service.
“Tulsa is a beautiful city … But today, everybody can see the disaster it’s turning into — homeless people on every corner, trash piling up, and Oklahoma families are being forced to live in fear,” Stitt said in Thursday’s release. “This is the city’s job, but Mayor (Monroe) Nichols and Tulsa leadership haven’t met the level of action needed to keep neighborhoods safe.”
Beth Edwards Svetlic, chair of A Way Home and assistant executive director at Youth Services of Tulsa, responded Friday saying 60 organizations continue to coordinate efforts to reduce homelessness across Tulsa County as they have for several years. But shelters are full.
Svetlic said her organization’s work has resulted in 587 Tulsans being housed through the first seven months of 2025 and more than 14,000 individuals receiving shelter, case management, evictions prevention, and services. “But those services are maxed out, our shelters are overfilled,” she said.
In a Friday Facebook post, Tulsa-based BeHeard Movement said the new policy will “only make survival harder” for the unhoused. The nonprofit organization provides people experiencing homelessness with showers, case management and other services,
“The governor has stated that our neighbors will have two options: housing or jail. But where? Today alone, we served more than 100 people who want housing and would gladly take it if it were available,” the post stated. “We agree that something must be done about homelessness in Tulsa and OKC. But this is not the answer.”
On Thursday, Nichols responded, calling Stitt an “unserious person.”
“When I took office, I inherited a homelessness crisis largely unaddressed by anyone in public office, including our two-term governor, who disbanded the interagency council on homelessness, which had a crippling impact on service providers, leading to what we have today,” Nichols said in a statement.
The mayor also emphasized the creation of his Safe Move initiative, announced in August, that is expected to get hundreds of people off the streets permanently by addressing the underlying issues of chronic homelessness rather than just shifting the problem around the city.
