NEWS City Rescue Mission, 800 W. California Ave., sees a significant increase in clients starting in September. | Photo Alexa Ace
Sisu Youth Services, said Sisu’s overnight beds are usually filled as well. “Our emergency weather beds are utilized most every time they’re available. Maybe not all of them, but to some extent we almost always are on a wait. Typically, if there’s an extra bed, there’s two or three youth that are going to fill those beds regardless of the weather really,” she said. “But we definitely want to make sure that they have a safe place to stay when the temperatures are below 32 degrees.”
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Youth focus
Winter contingency Overnight shelters for people without a home rely on donations and volunteers to best serve their clients, especially in the cold months. By Miguel Rios
Sixteen people experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City died during winter 2017. Some froze to death on the streets while others died trying to stay warm in fires that got out of control. Having somewhat of a cold weather plan in place to shelter people experiencing homelessness was not enough to save those lives. That was when city shelter leaders got together to craft a more exhaustive plan, said Dan Straughan, Homeless Alliance executive director. “We knew we had to have something more formal, more structured and more robust,” Straughan said. “All the shelter directors meet once a month for lunch, and so we just got together and, in consultation with The City of Oklahoma City and some volunteer groups, put together this program. It’s pretty structured. We’ve all agreed that we will open overflow beds when it’s 32 degrees [Fahrenheit] or below, and we determine that 48 hours in advance. So we always know and can tell people if the shelters will be open tonight and tomorrow night. We all agreed that for forecasting purposes, we would use the National Weather Service website and use 73101 as the location.” Salvation Army, 1001 N. Pennsylvania Ave.; City Rescue Mission, 800 W. California Ave.; Jesus House, 1335 W. Sheridan Ave.; Grace Rescue, 2205 Exchange Ave.; and Sisu Youth Services, 3131 N. Pennsylvania Ave., all open up overflow beds for the winter contingency plan crafted in 2018. “Last winter, we didn’t lose anybody,” Straughan said. “That’s an outcome, and that’s exactly what we wanted to happen. We hope for the same thing this year.”
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The plan
Currently, the five shelters in the plan collectively offer about 161 overflow beds for the winter contingency plan, but that’s just phase one. “In three phases, we can actually go to a little over 300 beds,” Straughan said. If they see the beds filling up and expect to max out, Grace Rescue Mission can open its gym for an additional 75 cots. If those were to fill up as well, which Straughan said would likely only be due to a long stretch of low temperatures,
forecasts temperatures lower than 32 degrees, an email goes out to all shelters and other partner agencies like local libraries and meal sites. “What most of them do is make sure that people who are homeless are aware that that’s available to them. That’s the big thing,” Straughan said. “For all those shelters that are doing cold-weather contingencies, there’s additional costs involved in staffing, in supplies, food, that kind of stuff, so Regional Food Bank [of Oklahoma] steps up to provide extra meals during the winter. United Way made a special sort of emergency grant to defray the cost of staffing and security at shelters.”
For all those shelters that are doing cold-weather contingencies, there’s additional costs involved. Dan Straughan
Dan Straughan is executive director of Homeless Alliance. | Photo Alexa Ace
Homeless Alliance can open its day shelter for an additional 70 spaces. “We will not turn somebody away. If we were one over capacity, shelters will just make room,” Straughan said. “We may just have to provide transportation.” As soon as National Weather Service
As of late December, the weather contingency plan has been activated 16 nights and the highest utilization was Nov. 11 when 141 beds were occupied. While the whole system activates when temperature forecasts fall to 32 degrees Fahrenheit or less, some providers like City Rescue Mission open their overflow beds at higher temperatures. Including those nights means the winter contingency plan has been activated 39 nights, with the first being Oct. 30. Erin Goodin, City Rescue Mission CEO and president, said they have filled pretty much all of their overflow beds when the contingency plan has been activated. “Especially on our men’s side, not so much on our women’s side, but every night, our cold weather men’s beds are full,” she said. “We haven’t turned anybody away, but we will increase our count a little bit if we need to. We try not to overload our security staff at night, but we have never gotten to the point where we’ve had to actually turn anybody away.” Jamie Caves, executive director of
Sisu Youth Services is the only shelter in the plan that specifically caters to youth experiencing homelessness. After the closure of the only other youth-focused overnight shelter, Sisu became the only place where youth could find a bed to stay overnight. That made Sisu much more busy than ever before. Caves said things have somewhat stabilized but its decision in May to temporarily expand three available overnight beds has stayed in effect. Sisu currently has 19 overnight beds, and five additional spaces open up when the cold weather contingency is activated. “It was pretty chaotic and stressful for a few months after, but it has stabilized some,” she said. “There’s a lot of pressure when you’re the only one because that means you have to be really careful about suspending a youth for bad behavior, so that puts us in a situation where we really have to weigh out, ‘Is this safe for the other youth here, and what is the contingency plan for this youth?’ Weighing those against each other is a difficult position to be in, but when you’re the only one, it’s certainly something that we’re faced with constantly.” Being a shelter that focuses on youth also comes with different obstacles officials have to help clients overcome. For example, unaccompanied minors aren’t able to stay at any of the adult shelters. “So if find yourself 17 and homeless, there isn’t another shelter you can stay at,” Caves said. “Then there’s things like enrolling in school, there’s health-care barriers sometimes if they are a minor. … This age population, we find that there is sometimes a lack of skill and that they do not have the skills they need to rely on themselves. So we also make sure that we’re teaching them how to do some very basic functions like cook a simple meal for yourself, how to do some basic chores and keep things clean. … The goal is for this experience with homelessness to be brief and one time, but in order for that to happen, we know that they need some skills.”
Cold shelter
Even when the temperatures remain higher than 32 degrees throughout the cold months, shelters across the city see
