More than 213 People Housed Through Rapid Exits So Far; City to Near 400 Housed Through Safe Move Tulsa by Week’s End
The City of Tulsa today announced the progress on Safe Move Tulsa's "rapid exit" strategies that have helped more than 213 people quickly resolve their homelessness, with a goal to reach 1,000 of these rapid outcomes by the end of this year.
This brings the total number of people exiting homelessness through Safe Move Tulsa to 360~ individuals since last fall. Combined, these efforts are making an immediate impact on improving shelter capacity and decreasing street homelessness - all while improving public safety citywide.
"Safe Move Tulsa is showing what it can look like when we see investments that live up to the strategies we know work," Mayor Monroe Nichols said. "From the beginning, our goal has been to help people end their homelessness while addressing the concerns from residents that we hear about every single day. We've made significant progress rehousing individuals from encampments while keeping those encampments closed, and now we're seeing that work travel upstream by helping people resolve their homelessness quickly before they end up on the streets or in long-term encampments."
Rapid exits are an integral part of the City’s Safe Move Tulsa strategy - a strategy that was launched in the fall of 2025 with an initial $6 million investment from the City of Tulsa for the Safe Move Tulsa rehousing plan, which outlined an initial goal of getting 300 people housed from the streets and shelter within a nine-month period.
Since the City's initial investment into that plan, an additional $5 million has been invested for the effort, including $4 million from the Tulsa Leadership Council and $1 million from the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation, which has allowed the effort to scale and expand to a goal of 1,300 people exiting homelessness by the end of the year.
With the expansion of Safe Move Tulsa, local experts have leaned on the expertise of Clutch Consulting, whose work with communities nationwide and with Tulsa’s local homeless response system, A Way Home for Tulsa, reinforced the need to scale interventions that quickly end someone's homelessness to free up shelter space so that less people are chronically on the streets.
About Rapid Exits
Every year, about 3,000 adults become homeless in Tulsa, and around 74% can be served with the light-touch, one-time interventions. The Rapid Exit approach is a way to help people leave homelessness as quickly and safely as possible, often with one-time, immediate solutions to return people to housing stability such as transportation assistance to reconnect with family, security deposits, short-term rental assistance, or other targeted supports.
Implemented by local shelters and service providers such as Tulsa Day Center, Mental Health Association of Oklahoma, John 3:16 and Salvation Army, rapid exits in Tulsa began to scale earlier this spring and have produced real results. Using Safe Move Tulsa's new rapid exit strategy, individuals who had previously waited 90 days to exit homelessness have been able, on average, exit homelessness in two weeks or less.
“Shelter providers in Tulsa have been working for years to find ways to quickly move people out of shelter and into stable housing,” said Mark Smith, CEO of Housing Solutions. “Thanks to this unified vision and new resources dedicated to this effort, we’re now seeing real progress - people are moving through the system and into housing faster than before. Access to shelter remains critical but helping people resolve their homelessness is just as important. These early results, combined with ongoing encampment decommissioning efforts, show that Tulsa is making meaningful progress toward eliminating street sleeping in our community.”
While some shelters in Tulsa have previously operated their own rapid exit programs, Safe Move Tulsa adds new, targeted resources and consistent practices across the homeless system to improve system flow and prevent street sleeping. Launching these new interventions from this coordinated strategy decreases the strain on existing shelter facilities so that people move faster out of shelter beds, and more people can come inside.
“The Tulsa Day Center is grateful for this opportunity to lend our expertise and resources to this historic effort led by the City of Tulsa," said Mack Haltom, CEO of the Tulsa Day Center. "The laser focus and collaboration between agencies has streamlined the process of moving people from the streets to shelter to long-term, affordable housing. For the individual person, this has resulted in fewer nights sleeping outside and immediate access to help addressing whatever barriers to housing they face. These successes add up to a stronger Tulsa for all of us, and the Day Center is proud to play a part.”
Safe Move Tulsa | Work to End Street Sleeping
Since launching the rehousing portion of Safe Move Tulsa in November of 2025, the City and its partners have helped more than 134 people transition from encampments into housing and have successfully closed 9 encampments, including the entirety of Downtown to long-term street sleeping.
Another encampment decommissioning effort is currently underway and is expected to wrap later this week.
Safe Move Tulsa | An Overview
Ultimately, Safe Move Tulsa builds not only on the shared priorities of the Mayor/Council, but also from recommendations made in the 2024 Path to Home Recommendations released by the 3H Task Force, which called for not only a dedicated encampment decommissioning strategy, but multiple other interventions that have either been carried out or are underway.
Over the past several years, progress made to accomplish those recommendations, in addition to the mayor's spring 2025 executive order on homelessness, have resulted in the City:
Safe Move Tulsa remains focused on reducing unsheltered homelessness while creating pathways to long-term stability for Tulsa residents experiencing homelessness.
Residents can learn more about the initiative and track progress at: www.SafeMoveTulsa.com
Residents can also learn more about the 3H Task Force's Path to Home Recommendations at: www.cityoftulsa.org/PathToHome
FY27 Budget
The FY27 budget includes dedicated funding from the City to continue its work with Safe Move Tulsa. The budget includes $23.5 million for a multi-year response to homelessness, including an additional $500,000 for operations at the soon-to-be operational low-barrier shelter - The Harbor.
For more information on the FY27 budget, visit: www.cityoftulsa.org/budget
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