By Michael Kinney
It didn’t take long for it to happen. One day Jacqueline Rich was gainfully employed; weeks later the Bethany native found herself jobless and living on the streets in 2023.
Each day for an entire year, Rich said she would search for basic needs such as food, water, and a place to clean herself while also contacting local homeless agencies for services. Her nights were spent hiding out near the railroad tracks, avoiding members of the Oklahoma City Police Department, the mentally ill and predatory street people who roamed the streets looking to hurt people or worse.
The single mother’s tactics for evasion didn’t always work as she describes being harassed and even assaulted.
“I met a man that was also homeless and we kind of navigated the streets together,” Rich explained. “There are a lot of mentally ill people on the streets that need medication and need to be in hospitals. They don’t know what they are doing, and they can become really agitated and really aggressive.”
Rich is one of thousands of Americans who would have been considered unhoused. According to the Department of Housing and Development’s (HUD) 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment, approximately 653,100 men, women and children in the United States experienced homelessness on any single night in 2023. That is an increase of more than 70,000 people from 2022.
In response to the ever-growing unhoused population, several states around the country have made laws that essentially criminalize being homeless. That includes Oklahoma, which reported 3,754 homeless individuals in January of 2022.
In November, Senate Bill 1854 is set to go into effect and become the law of the land in Oklahoma. The bill, signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt in late April, makes ‘unauthorized camping’ on public lands a misdemeanor punishable by a fine or even time in jail if assistance is refused.
According to SB 1854, an unauthorized camp is described as “any tent, shelter, or bedding constructed or arranged for the purpose of or in such a way to permit overnight use on a property not designated as a campsite. Persons may not use public rights-of-way or state-owned lands for the purposes of establishing an unauthorized camp.”
An encampment can start out as one individual setting up a single tent, a bedroll or even a shopping cart full of their possessions. But it can quickly grow as more of the people gather together to form what proponents of the law call tent cities.
“We’re not going to allow tent cities, and we’re not going to allow the homeless to camp out like we’re seeing in other states,” Stitt told the media before signing the bill. “It’s a tough conversation,” Stitt said. “It’s a big conversation. There’s substance abuse. There’s mental illness. There are people in certain situations that need help. We also have to look at the rights of businesses, and private property owners, and community safety.”
SB 1854 is focused directly on curbing the homeless situation that has grown around the state, according to the bill’s sponsor, State Representative Chris Kannady (R-Oklahoma City).
“I’m all for more resources to the homeless,” Kannady told the media. “We’ve had a 30 percent increase in the homeless population, and we’ve increased the resources by 50 percent in the past 10 years. Increasing resources will help, but it’s not working. This is about as lenient as you can get, and the point is to put forth something that will incentivize getting people into the treatment that they deserve and also give our law enforcement the tools where they can legally do what they are already doing now.”
Once SB 1854 goes into effect, state and local law enforcement in every community throughout Oklahoma can remove someone for camping on state-owned lands such as highway rights-of-way, medians and state parks. According to the law, a warning must be issued the first time.
A citation can be handed out “if the person refuses any assistance offered to them by the arresting officer. Such assistance may include, but is not limited to, transportation to a shelter, food pantry, or other place where resources are made available to assist the indigent and homeless.”
“It makes it a misdemeanor for everyone to place bedding or shelter for sleeping on state-owned land. This essentially fines unhoused individuals $50 or they face 15 days in a county jail,” said David Delgado, the Chief Collaboration Officer for the Homeless Alliance. “It requires police to issue warnings first and only issue a citation after the person ignores the warning and refuses assistance. What the assistance is, is not clearly stated. It essentially states that it may include transportation to a shelter, a food pantry, or other places where resources are available.”
Yet, as Delgado pointed out, the vagueness of how the law will be implemented can make the situation harder on the homeless and those who are called upon to enforce it.
“So (we’re) going to ask you to leave this area and now I’m going to give you a ride over to a shelter that doesn’t exist, or a food pantry that provides people with frozen goods, does nothing to solve an individual situation,” said Delgado. “So yeah, it’s pretty grim and it’s really sad.”
When Delgado was asked what he envisions happening when SB 1854 kicks in and the police begin to enforce the law, he provided a grim outlook.
“In my experience, what will happen here is that law enforcement will jump very quickly to ticketing people and then just citing them and then asking them to move along right away,” Delgado said. “It’s going to be very challenging to transport 10, 20 people to a day shelter, for example. And so it’s putting law enforcement in the role of a social worker and outreach. I’m curious to know how that’s going to work. If I’m a police officer and I’m in a situation, what are my options here? And it’s likely not to connect that individual to services, but just to ask them to move along and here’s a ticket and don’t come back, or you’re going to receive a trespassing citation as well. And so that’s a piece of this that I am also really curious about how that’s going to play out.”
SB 1854 also doesn’t clearly define what constitutes state-owned land. According to Jaime Caves, the Communications Manager for Oklahoma City’s Key to Home Partnership, it will be determined on a case-by-case basis in which the OKCPD will have to first look up who owns the property.
“When we are working on properties, we look it up site by site to see,” Caves said. “I can tell you areas besides exit ramps and highways and under overpasses are sometimes state lands. Places downtown are much more likely to be city property or private property. But there isn’t a standard that this is state property, and this is city property. We are just closing encampments and for each site, we look up and do some research on who owns the property. There is just not a blanket answer.”
Caves admits this will not be information that most people experiencing homelessness will know off-hand. But that is where the initial warning comes into play to inform them they are breaking the law and can’t be there without having to charge and ticket them.
Private property owners have always had the right to call the police if anyone, including the homeless, is trespassing on their property and can ask them to be removed. That does not change with the passage of SB 1854.
As far as property that is owned by the city, that is left up to the discretion of authorities. Bus terminals, libraries, downtown sidewalks, neighborhood parks or street divisions may be cleared out the next to only find itself a homeless encampment again a few days later.
According to the annual Point in Time Count from January 2023, there are 1,436 people experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City, an increase of nearly 100 over 2022. Just like with the national count, many believe those numbers are far short of the actual tally. Regardless, the number of unhoused exceeds the total number of emergency beds in Oklahoma City’s shelters, which stands at 1,010.
“I think the number is definitely more than the one-night count,” Caves said. “The one-night count is going to provide us a snapshot. We know there are at least that many people experiencing homelessness. But we’re going to miss people. There are people who do not want to be found.”
Delgado said he spent weeks trying to convince legislators on both sides of the aisle to vote against the bill. However, it was to no avail as it passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 77-18 and in the Senate 37-6.
Even after Stitt signed the bill into law in April, an exasperated Delgado was unable to find the logic in how it would help solve the overall problem of homelessness. He doesn’t see how putting someone who is already experiencing what may be the most difficult times of their lives into the criminal system is beneficial to anyone.
“It definitely doesn’t address the issue at the root cause. What I hear lawmakers saying is ‘Hey, I’m hearing from the community and I’m hearing concerns about individuals camping near their homes or near their businesses, and we want to be able to do something about that.’ And so I agree to that extent,” Delgado said. “I see somebody experiencing homelessness, there’s human suffering involved, and I agree that there should be something done about that. This approach, which is kind of a heavy-handed use, is a hammer to screw in a screw here. It is not the right one… this bill will just compound the problem even further.”
Delgado still has one last Hail Mary left, however. The same week Stitt signed SB 1854, the United States Supreme Court was hearing arguments on a similar law out of Oregon.
In that case, Grants Pass city officials passed an ordinance that would fine homeless individuals $295 if they put up an encampment. Critics declared it was a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits excessive bail, fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.
“I’m a pretty optimistic person, and so I have to hang on to the hope that the Supreme Court is going to take criminalization of homelessness off the table,” Delgado said. “There’s that precedent that it is cruel and unusual punishment. I’m hoping that we can just take that a step up and say that is the case, not just for Oregon, but for our country.”
If the Supreme Court rules the Grants Pass law is unconstitutional, SB 1854 would violate the ruling. However, if the Court upholds the lower court’s decision that it is constitutional, Oklahoma will be free to implement its version November 1.
Because the case is pending, officials from the Oklahoma City Police Department refrained from commenting on how they will enforce the law and what that means for its officers.
“The Supreme Court is expected to rule this summer regarding homeless encampments on public property,” OKCPD Captain Valerie Littlejohn said, “so it would be premature to comment prior to the ruling which will likely come down prior to the effective date of the bill.”
Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules, critics and proponents of the law seem to agree that homelessness is not going to be solved overnight and if something drastic isn’t done, it will continue to grow as more people find themselves in the same situation as Rich. One accident or bad decision away from living on the streets.
According to Delgado, the most effective way to combat homelessness is not to criminalize the unhoused, but to simply provide more housing.
Proponents of SB 1854 say that in a time when both the real estate and rental prices have exploded, just putting a roof over someone’s head is not the simple answer it is being made out to sound. When factoring in the cost to house the state’s homeless along with the other services and treatments needed to make sure they do not end up back on the streets would be significant.
However, Delgado, as an example, pointed out that Oklahoma City recently voted to spend nearly a billion taxpayer dollars on a new stadium for the Oklahoma City Thunder. There are ways to find the money needed, but the political will to do so is lacking, according to Delgado.
However, Caves said that Oklahoma City’s Key to Home Partnership has had success in taking people off the streets and putting them into housing. The program put 1,473 people into housing in 2023.
According to Caves, Key to Home has whittled the wait time down from 18 months to four weeks by removing much of the red tape that other services are bogged down by.
“We are working on a new program with Key to Home,” Caves said. “We are working on system refinements and some strategies to help move people that are living outside in encampments directly into housing. It’s a collaboration with several service partners. We’re removing as many barriers as we can for people. Our landlord engagement team is finding apartments. We believe that housing is the answer to homelessness.”
Rich agreed. After being unhoused for a year, battling the summer heat and frigid winters, she said she never gave up hope that she and her son would be reunited and live in a place of their own. That dream came true for Rich almost three months ago when the Homeless Alliance found a small two-bedroom apartment for her and her now 17-year-old son.
Rich remembers that first night of laying her head down in her own bed for the first time in more than a year. “It’s an unimaginable peace,” Rich said.
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