Strategic Priorities

Our Strategic Priorities

Ending homelessness in Oklahoma City requires a coordinated system that meets people where they are and helps them find lasting stability. Homelessness is a different experience for every person. It looks different for a veteran sleeping outside, a family staying in an emergency shelter, or an individual whose mental health needs have made traditional housing programs challenging.

A one-size-fits-all response will never be enough.

That’s why Key to Home is focused on optimizing our homeless response system to ensure everyone has a direct pathway back to housing and long-term stability.

Why are these priorities?

Think of our homeless response system like a hospital emergency room that is nearly full before anyone new arrives. Every day, more people walk in needing care. The doctors and nurses are working as hard and as fast as they can, and they’re treating nearly everyone who comes through the door. But the waiting room never empties, and over time, people start lining up outside because there’s no longer any room inside. 

How do we solve the problem?

You could build a second waiting room. But if that’s all you do, you’ll fill that one up too, and you’ll be right back where you started, just with more chairs and fewer dollars.

The only way to truly relieve the pressure is to redesign how the whole system works, starting with the front door. You station a triage nurse at the front door to quickly assess whether a patient truly needs emergency care, or whether urgent care down the street would actually serve them better. You bring in nurse practitioners to see the patients who need real care but don’t require a physician. And you make sure your doctors save their capacity to focus their expertise on the patients with complex and demanding needs.

When you do all three of those things together, you free up capacity in the hospital, you create more streamlined pathways to care for those who need it most, and you see the waiting room start to clear. 

Our homeless response system works the same way. We can keep adding more shelters and shelter beds, but if that’s all we do, we will fill them quickly and be in the same situation with fewer dollars.

The only way to truly reduce pressure on the system is to redesign it from the front door to the exit. That is what our strategic priorities are designed to do. Fewer people entering, faster, more direct pathways out, and the right level of support matched to each person’s unique needs.