Tulsa city councilors spent about an hour Wednesday digging into the numbers behind Safe Move Tulsa, the homelessness initiative Mayor Monroe Nichols created to clear encampments and get people into housing. Before Thursday's announcement, the effort had helped 798 people find housing, inching toward its goal of 1,300 formerly homeless individuals housed by the end of the year. The discussion, held during the city's Urban Development Committee meeting, covered fiscal year 2027 funding priorities alongside the initiative's broader trajectory.
As reported by Tulsa World, Safe Move Tulsa has had its ups and downs since launching, and the city has said that funding would run out this summer. Twelve encampments have been decommissioned so far, including one downtown, and officials say those closures have held with no return of camps at those sites. Councilors now receive quarterly updates on the initiative's progress, giving them a running look at how the numbers are moving.
Data Starts Catching Up to the Work on the Ground
Mark Smith, CEO of Housing Solutions, which leads A Way Home for Tulsa, told councilors that the data is finally starting to reflect the scope of work that's been completed. Smith said Safe Move Tulsa was very close to helping 800 people, and the share of people who return to homelessness after 12 months currently sits under 5%. A performance dashboard tracking the initiative's metrics is available on the Safe Move Tulsa website.
Those figures build on momentum the city has been touting publicly for months. According to the City of Tulsa, the initiative launched in the fall of 2025 with an initial $6 million investment and an early goal of housing 300 people within nine months. Rapid-exit strategies alone had helped more than 213 people quickly resolve their homelessness at one point, with the city aiming for 1,000 rapid outcomes by year's end, and the rehousing side of the program — which launched in November 2025 — had moved more than 134 people out of encampments and closed nine encampments by that stage. Participants who once waited 90 days to exit homelessness have been exiting in two weeks or less on average, the city says, and the same effort cut housing placement times to 30 days or less, compared with a typical 220-day wait for people on the A Way Home for Tulsa waitlist, per a separate city release.
Councilors Push on What Full-Scale Success Would Cost
Councilor Laura Bell asked what Safe Move Tulsa's full-scale number would be in theory — a question that cuts to the heart of how big the problem really is. The answer: more than 3,000 people annually, a figure that dwarfs the current year-end goal and underscores how much more work remains even after the program's early wins.
Councilor Phil Lakin said the city's homelessness working group aims to give the council and the public better tools to evaluate the initiative's performance going forward. Safe Move Tulsa is part of a three-phase plan to end street sleeping in Tulsa, and the working group's goal is to make that long arc legible — not just to officials, but to residents watching the encampments disappear from their neighborhoods.
Where the Money Stands, and Where It's Going
James Wagner, director of the Planning and Neighborhoods Department, laid out the financial picture for councilors. Safe Move Tulsa had $6 million initially allocated across three funding sources, plus $5 million in private funding. Wagner said all $6 million in public funds had been committed in some form, and that the remaining funds are now all on the private side — meaning public money committed to the program so far has effectively been used up.
A second cohort of funding has been appropriated at $1.5 million for this year, Wagner said, while another $4.5 million sits in the budget for the next phase but hasn't yet been appropriated. He told councilors the next step is to work out when and how those funds get released. That budget conversation echoes the city's broader FY27 plan, which includes $23.5 million for a multiyear homelessness response and an additional $500,000 for operations at the low-barrier shelter The Harbor, according to the city. The Tulsa City Council separately approved a plan to appropriate up to $6 million over the next year in quarterly installments specifically for Safe Move Tulsa.
A Consultant's Blueprint and a Bigger Announcement Looming
Clutch Consulting Group, a Houston-based firm that specializes in helping municipalities tackle homelessness, has met with city councilors to help devise a plan for addressing Tulsa's homelessness problem. The firm's recommendations reportedly call for a $60 million investment over three years, according to KJRH, a figure that dwarfs what's currently appropriated and signals just how far the city's ambitions extend beyond the current budget cycle.
The committee discussion came a day ahead of a Safe Move Tulsa press conference expected to include the largest encampment-to-housing announcement yet. It also follows a year of broader progress across the county's homeless response system: the 2026 Point-in-Time Count found 1,443 people experiencing homelessness in Tulsa County, essentially flat from 1,449 in 2025 and the first time in five years the count hasn't increased, according to KTUL. That same count found unsheltered homelessness down nearly 32% year over year, even as lack of affordable housing remained the top reported cause of homelessness countywide.
