The Homeless Alliance

The Homeless Alliance began as a group of community volunteers concerned about the fractured and often fractious system of care for the homeless in Oklahoma City. These volunteers visited other communities that had successfully implemented coordinated systems (Columbus, OH, and Phoenix, AZ) and studied the strategies used by these and several other cities that had drastically reduced their homeless populations.

Primarily funded by private foundation grants from the Noble Foundation, the Merrick Foundation, and the Inasmuch Foundation, the Homeless Alliance incorporated in April 2004.

Today, the Homeless Alliance is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the system of care for the homeless in Oklahoma City through collaboration with service providers, city government, and local businesses. The ultimate goal of the Homeless Alliance is to end long-term homelessness in Oklahoma City by both preventing homeless and increasing the supply of affordable and permanent supportive housing to move those who are currently homeless back into housing. In order to end long-term homelessness, we focus on the following:

As a means of reaching the goal of ending homelessness, the Homeless Alliance envisions a unified system of care, believing strongly that performance-based funding, centralized planning, and consistent outside evaluation will dramatically improve the services provided to our homeless population.

The Homeless Alliance vigorously encourages the use of Horizon, Oklahoma City’s homeless management information system, a federally-supported, networked computer database that will enable all service providers to access data on homeless clients and the services available to them. Widespread use of Horizon will not only facilitate case management but, in the process, also generate system-wide data on the number and characteristics of homeless persons in Oklahoma City.

The Homeless Alliance seeks to bring our community together to find better ways to help our homeless and make the system more efficient, more rational, and more caring.