A new program aims to reduce homelessness in Oklahoma City
The Key to Home Partnership is a collaborative of local organizations working together to address homelessness in Oklahoma City. The initiative was formed in 2023.
Erika Warren from the partnership says the community recognized they “needed to do things a little differently” to address homelessness.
“Our goal with the encampment re-housing initiative is to house 500 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness by the end of 2025 and we just closed our 21st encampment, and we surpassed our halfway goal last month,” said Warren.
To date, Key to Home reports it has housed 332 people across those encampments, including a recent group of twenty-six. Of those clients housed through the encampment re-housing initiative, Warren says only ten are again experiencing homelessness
The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation reports a shortage of game wardens
Officials say the department has thirteen job openings for game wardens, during the peak of hunting season, according to reporting from KFOR.
Wade Farrar is the Assistant Chief of law enforcement and says the openings are due to retirement within the force and pay.
According to Farrar, the department has 118 game wardens covering all seventy-seven counties when fully staffed. However, the force currently is ten percent below full capacity. The department is funded through the purchasing of hunting and fishing licenses.
Republican State Senator David Bullard chairs the wildlife committee and says game wardens are paid less than other law enforcement in the state.
Bullard is pushed for the Oklahoma Wildlife Modernization Act which will raise the prices of hunting and fishing licenses, allowing pay increases for game wardens.
The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality seeks input from residents to help meet federal emissions guidelines by 2026
Oklahoma’s Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, begins it’s planned information gathering process with a public meeting on December 3, 2024. The public hearings are intended to help the state with plans to regulate pollution from oil and gas production and fossil fuel-fired power plants.
Federal guidelines on existing oil and gas sources and power plants were published by the Environmental Protection Agency in March and May this year. Now the state must establish its own regulations for limiting pollution from the sectors.
DEQ spokesperson Erin Hatfield says it’s unclear whether the federal guidelines will change under the incoming Trump administration.
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