The number of people experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City decreased for the first time since 2022, city officials reported Thursday.
The data comes from an annual Point in Time Count required by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The citywide count began in the early morning on January 23, right before the coldest days of 2026. Volunteers fanned out across the city to locate and survey as many people experiencing homelessness as possible.
In a 24-hour period, service providers counted 1,867 people who were staying in transitional housing, shelters, permanent supportive housing or living without shelter. The total is a 1% decrease from last year, when 1,882 people were counted.
It's the first recorded decline since Key To Home, the city's public-private partnership designed to tackle the issue, was established. City officials announced this year's findings during a public event last week.
"We know that by nearly every measure, from population, jobs, economic development and national recognition, our city is growing in stature," said Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt. "But with that growth comes a lot of complexity. More people means more demand on the systems that were not always built to scale."
Holt said city leaders realized the homelessness response system needed improvement, so collaborators spearheaded a new approach. The Key to Home Partnership includes more than 50 philanthropies, government service providers, faith communities and businesses that started working together to prevent homelessness in 2023.
Holt thanked the city council members, service providers and faith leaders in the room for their hard work, attributing success to their long hours and commitment to funding, sometimes expensive, projects.
His appreciation was echoed by Key to Home Partnership Chair Gary Brooks.
"You can see the city's commitment isn't just writing a check and a line item on a budget," he said. "There's extremely committed leadership all the way through City Hall."
Despite an overall decrease in the population of people experiencing homelessness, some sub-groups have grown since 2022.
The number of families experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City increased by 5% between 2025 and 2026. Families are unsheltered groups with at least one minor, and totals have gradually increased over the last four years.
This year, City Care and City Rescue Mission began receiving $2.5 million from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, to support families navigating homelessness.
Additionally, 167 people counted were experiencing chronic unsheltered homelessness or have been homeless for at least a year, while struggling with a serious mental illness, substance use disorder or physical disability. It's a 20% uptick from last year's 139 people who were chronically unsheltered.
Jamie Caves, the Strategy Implementation Manager for Key to Home, said people experiencing unsheltered homelessness are the most vulnerable to violence, untreated illness and premature death.
"In 2022, 35% of everyone experiencing homelessness in our community was living outside on the streets without a roof or safe place to lay their head at night," she said. When we move the needle in a meaningful and sustained way on unsheltered homelessness, we're not just affecting a trend line on a paper, we're changing the conditions and the trajectories of people's lives."
In the past two years, Key to Home reports rehousing 513 people living in encampments and closing down 30 encampment sites.
Caves pushed back against the myth that most people experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City came to the state after they lost their housing. Instead, she said data shows 87% of unsheltered individuals reported that they became homeless in Oklahoma.
"We know that homelessness doesn't exist in a vacuum," said assistant city manager LaShawn Thompson. "It intersects with health care, with mental health, with housing affordability and with how our emergency services are used across the city."
Thompson said the city's new Mobile Integrated Healthcare program has helped reduce the city's reliance on emergency rooms by supporting people whose needs are driving repeated calls for help. Partially funded by the state's share of opioid settlement money, alternative response teams can be dispatched to mental health crises or overdose calls, instead of police officers.
In April, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that applications for the next round of federal funding will be published in June. The department is beginning the shift away from "housing first" policies and will prioritize transitional housing and partnerships between a wide range of providers.
"We've been working, planning and looking at how we can arrange resources to ensure that we're maximizing the available dollars from the federal government," Caves said.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
