Alleviating homelessness has been a major priority for the City of Tulsa, Tulsa County and the Tulsa Regional Chamber.
A key element in that mission will be The Harbor, the city’s first low-barrier shelter scheduled to open by the end of the year.
The cost of the 180-bed facility is roughly $16 million.
“We could have spent a couple of years trying to raise the money to do this construction but chose not to do that,” said Bill Major, president of the Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation. “So, in order to expedite the development of The Harbor, the Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation, teaming up with the Ruth Nelson Family Foundation, is agreeing to cover the construction and development costs for this facility.”
Major and Courtney Knoblock, vice president for programs for the Zarrow Foundation, detailed Zarrow’s philanthropic efforts targeting homelessness Monday at the Chamber’s Board of Directors meeting. The conversation was facilitated by Jonathan Long, the Chamber’s senior vice president of Community Development.
Built on land formerly occupied by the Tulsa County juvenile center at 315 S. Gilcrease Museum Road, the 24-hour Harbor is projected to shelter between 2,300 and 3,200 people annually and re-house between 400 to 500 people in the first 18 months.
It will be operated by Oklahoma City-based City Care.
“They work with a real sense of urgency,” Knoblock said of City Care officials. “Eighty-nine percent of their shelter residents only stay 90 days or less. That’s huge. We’re not talking an organization that knows how to get homeless people in the door, triage them quickly and get them back into housing. They are a good fit.”
The Zarrow Foundation has five funding initiatives: reducing hunger; improving mental health and health care access; alleviating homelessness; expanding affordable housing and community grantmaking.
During the past decade, it has established three policy centers: Hunger Free Oklahoma; the Healthy Minds Policy Initiative and Housing Forward. Combined, they have pulled in $2 billion in leveraged support into the state of Oklahoma, Knoblock said.
“Our grantmaking is geared toward reducing homelessness,” Knoblock said. “That is the name of the game. I wish there was a magic bullet, but there’s not.”
The Zarrow Foundation also is the primary funder for Housing Solutions, a nonprofit dedicated to building systems that make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring.
On any given night, 1,000 people are experiencing homelessness in Tulsa. The city only has 544 permanent emergency homeless shelter beds for adults and families.
“We want everybody marching like a tight marching band,” Knoblock said of the wraparound services associated with homelessness. “This is not a disco. That’s not what we want. Data is important. That’s really what Housing Solutions does. It drives all that coordination and creates efficiency with the data.”