Michael Byers cooks over an open fire for his three children most nights, boiling water and warming whatever food they can find before the kids climb into tents pitched along an Oklahoma City riverbank. The 36-year-old father and his children, Ayvah, 12, Easton, 14, and Aurelio, 10, live at the encampment.
The family's situation, detailed in a report from The Times, traces back to a housing dispute that cost them their apartment. Byers and his children lost their home after an $808 debt and eviction stemming from a misunderstanding about housing assistance, according to Byers's account relayed to the paper. Losing the apartment left them without a home.
Byers had moved with Easton and Aurelio about two years before publication after leaving a homeless shelter. Ayvah joined the camp in March after leaving her mother's home. The children wanted to attend their local state school in person, but Byers said he would not send them to class without clean clothes, fearing they would be bullied and fight over dirty laundry — so instead they attend remote school using a single donated laptop the three of them share.
A Camp Without Basics, and a Family Stretched Thin
The family cooks over an open fire and relies on a generator-powered portable Wi-Fi box for internet access, a setup that failed them on at least one occasion when the equipment cut out after overheating on a 38-degree day. When the connection died, Easton said his teachers did not answer his calls, and Ayvah's teacher took hours to respond to a password-reset request. Aurelio managed to finish his remote classes within an hour and a half once the Wi-Fi came back on.
The family walks hours along highway verges in search of food, mail and other supplies, and makes a weekly hour-and-a-half walk to church and back on Saturdays. Staff at a nearby Popeyes have taken to giving the family leftover food around 10 p.m.
Money is scarce. Byers has almost no income, receives debt-collector calls, and told the paper that about $100 in child support from Aurelio's mother came in that autumn. He grew up in a strict, very poor Catholic family on Oklahoma City's south side and has worked construction, factory and music-promotion jobs over the years. “One missed month of rent can set off a domino effect,” Byers said, describing how a single lapse spiraled into homelessness for his family.
Lakeside Village
Court records tied to the family's Lakeside Village tenancy show the landlord filed a lawsuit against Byers for $808 in alleged nonpayment, with the case heard in court one week after it was filed. Byers was ultimately ordered to pay $1,185.85 including legal fees.
Lakeside Village itself had a rocky recent history. The property was bought in December 2022 by 6370 W Wilshire Property LLC, a company set up in Delaware just months earlier, with Ezra Zaafarani signing the company's mortgage as its manager. Arch Property Group, described as a New York company registered at a Brooklyn address listed by the property owners, ran the complex day to day but did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Residents at an Oklahoma apartment complex have reported being evicted with five days' notice, a pattern that echoes a separate incident documented by KFOR, in which residents at an Oklahoma apartment complex said they came home to find eviction notices giving them less than five days to find somewhere else to live. One resident, Erick Rodriquez, told the station, “We have over 30 work orders and like all of them were just marked completed, none of the issues were resolved.”
A Shelter System Not Built for Fathers
Finding emergency shelter has proven especially hard for Byers as a single father.
Byers said his children motivate him to keep seeking help, and Ayvah said simply that she loves her father.
The Numbers Behind One Family's Struggle
The Byers family's story unfolds against a backdrop of worsening family homelessness in Oklahoma City. The city's 2026 Point-in-Time Count recorded 1,867 unhoused people, including more than 400 sleeping outdoors, according to The Frontier. Family homelessness rose 5% in that count, reaching its highest level since at least 2005, and has grown 71% since 2022. Unaccompanied youth homelessness climbed 11% in the same period, with 181 young people identified without a parent or guardian, 18 more than the prior year. More than half of those surveyed while sleeping outdoors this winter, 55%, said it was their first time experiencing homelessness.
Chronic unsheltered homelessness in the city is up 20% from 2025, the outlet reported, even as the overall number sleeping outside has dropped nearly 13% since 2022. The Journal Record has separately estimated a 45,000-unit shortfall in affordable housing.
The city has pursued several responses. The MAPS 4 Homelessness Program is investing $55.7 million in affordable-housing and homelessness projects, according to the Journal Record, including a former Motel 6 being converted into 76 permanent supportive-housing units and a West Haven Flats project adding 132 workforce-housing units alongside 55 project-based vouchers. Oklahoma City's Key to Home Partnership closed the Virginia Avenue encampment, the largest it has tackled, moving 75 residents toward permanent housing, per KOCO. The program reports an 85% success rate at roughly $20,000 per person annually.
Nationally, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted 746,000 homeless people in January 2025, with about one third living outside, though housing policy analysts believe the official count significantly undercounts the real total. Fewer than half of Americans have enough cash on hand to cover a $1,000 emergency, per a survey cited in the reporting, and many of the lowest-paying jobs come without sick pay — a combination Byers says can turn one bad month into a crisis.
