In 2024, Oklahoma City's Point in Time count concluded there were an estimated 1,838 people experiencing homelessness. This is a 28% increase from 2023, reflecting an increase in homelessness seen across the United States.

While systems-wide reforms like increases in temporary housing, or Housing First models may be considered to confront homelessness writ large, a new online platform is making it easy for locals to have a hand in helping their neighbors facing homelessness.

“We know the community wants to be part of [the] solution, but it often can be overwhelming to know how and where to plug in,” Erika Warren, communications manager for Oklahoma City’s Key to Home Partnership, told KOCO5 News. 

The Key To Home Partnership is a public-private project between the City of Oklahoma and 50 partner organizations, including realtors and housing and mental health nonprofits. Together, they aim to educate the public on the issue of homelessness and lead community strategies to help those in need.

Most recently, they have unveiled a virtual dashboard where volunteers can connect with all partnering agencies to lend a hand.

“The idea is to provide one streamlined platform where all of our partnership agencies can list the needs they have and ways the community can get involved in their missions,” Warren added.

KOCO5 News calls it a “one-stop shop.”

On the dashboard, users can find volunteer opportunities like serving dinner at a local shelter, or “Warehouse Wednesday” shifts to help sort donated furniture for an area nonprofit.

From there, they can sign up for volunteer shifts, find upcoming events, and stay in the loop with specific groups.

“You can select the agencies that you want to become a fan of so you can get notifications about that,” Warren explained. “Organizations like Sisu Youth Services have ongoing needs, so things like meal trains to bring in to feed the youth but also one-time events they can populate into that site.”

The new platform is made possible through a donation from the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area Realtors Association, which continues to rank homelessness as the local cause of “most importance,” according to the association’s president Vanessa Johnson.

“Helping the many community agencies working to solve homelessness by making it simpler for volunteers to join in will be a huge boost to their efforts,” Johnson told The Journal Record.

Those efforts are all part of a larger belief the Key To Home Partnership sums up in just a few words: “Everyone deserves a place to call home.”

“We believe that together, we can create and sustain a community where homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring,” the city’s Key To Home webpage shares.

This is done, the page adds, “through strong public/private partnerships, supporting collaboration among stakeholders, using data to guide our strategy, and educating the public on homelessness and its solutions.”

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Header photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash