New homelessness diversion pilot program launches in Oklahoma City

Written By: Sierra Pfeifer

(OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.) A new pilot program in Oklahoma City aims to reduce homelessness by diverting people and families away from emergency shelters and quickly connecting them with stable housing solutions.

Read this story on KOSU Radio here.

The initiative is a collaboration between the city’s Key to Home Partnership and Catholic Charities.

Diversion specialists will be embedded at City Rescue Mission, Salvation Army and City Care, where they will screen people accessing the shelters for the first time.

Jamie Caves, the strategy implementation manager for Key to Home, said the approach will prevent people from entering the homeless response system, or quickly help them exit if they do.

“It's about going to the very beginning, or the front door of an emergency shelter and helping address people's needs and work through strategy and support,” Caves said.

Case managers from Catholic Charities will use a triage tool to assess whether a person is experiencing homelessness for the first time and whether they are a good candidate for diversion.

To help qualifying participants, case managers will be able to use flexible private assistance funds to pay for immediate, practical solutions that keep a person out of the shelter, like short-term rental assistance or housing navigation support.

Caves said even though there are up-front costs associated with diversion, care becomes more expensive over time.

“Intervention is not only effective, but it's also more cost-efficient than long-term shelter stays or unsheltered homelessness,” she said.

Caves said the pilot program will last for the next six to 12 months, as the organizations gather data about its scalability and effectiveness.

She said they plan to evaluate how many people each diversion specialist can reasonably support and what staffing and funding levels would be required to expand the program system-wide.

She said she hopes diversion tactics like the pilot program will become a permanent fixture of the city’s homelessness approach.

“By reducing shelter entries and speeding up the exits, we're helping the entire homeless response system work more efficiently and reserving the limited shelter beds for folks with more complex needs,” Caves said.

Over the course of the year, she anticipates the pilot program will divert about 750 people from emergency shelters to other housing solutions.

“This is a significant step in the direction of making true strides in the way that we respond to homelessness in our community and reducing inflow,” she said.