About three years into the effort, Shawnee may be on the cusp of securing its own Continuum of Care (CoC) to help in its ongoing battle against homelessness.

“You may recall that the Community Survey identified (one of Shawnee’s) more pressing issues to be the solutions being needed to address the homeless issue in the community,” Shawnee Community Development Director Rian Harkins said during Shawnee City Commission’s July meeting. “Some of the activities over the last couple years, specifically, include bringing various nonprofits and community groups together and service providers to be a functional roundtable.”

Also, there are three VISTA volunteers who are dealing with care coordination, housing assistance and employment, he said.

“Their activities involve removing barriers, housing or employment, as well as helping other groups that are service providers do coordinated-care management and developing a more robust care system involving the groups within the roundtable,” he said.

Aside from that, he said other activities within the homeless roundtable include finalizing the Continuum of Care (CoC) application, which occurred in August 2023.

Establishing a CoC would essentially enable the roundtable to “transition into a formalized response and plan, using data and evidence-based methods to provide response to the homeless situation in the community,” he said.

This would be a formalized process that involves service providers, individuals and community groups, he said.

“The idea behind this is that it would be a more formalized, but also a more cohesive type of response,” he said, “very similar to what we’ve seen elsewhere in the state.”

Harkins said Shawnee is already in a CoC.

“It’s called the balance of state,” he explained, adding that it extends from Seminole, to Shawnee, through Edmond and Guthrie, out to the northwest corner of the state, including Guymon.

“Most of the funds that we see right now are used for domestic violence shelters and similar types of activities,” Harkins said. “(They are all very needed, all very useful, but we don’t receive any of those funds through our current CoC for any assistance.”

Switching from a CoC that covers a large region — like Shawnee is currently under — to a CoC that covers the community alone is the goal.

“Getting your hands on anything (dollars) like that (in a large group of communities) is really hard,” Mayor Ed Bolt said. “We don’t get any money from them to do the work.”

Bolt said the significance of Shawnee having its own CoC is that it will not have to compete (or share) with others in the region for the funds.

Everything Shawnee has done up to this point has been through volunteers and donations – except for one staff member, Harkins said, “which was originally considered a homeless program coordinator and has now been reclassified to be a community revitalization planner.”

That role will deal with homelessness, neighborhood revitalization and other similar activities, he said.

Some of the steps that have been taken over the last few months include:

• Working with the roundtable to develop additional capacity, which includes helping a nonprofit partner step forward to take a lead role;
• Creating a nonprofit of nonprofit groups and individuals;
• Homeless Resource Center is now being operated by Shawnee Rescue Mission directly;
• There has been an initial response from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that are “favorable,” Harkins said, “indicating that they were in a position to approve our CoC application.”

One of the initial things being looked at by HUD (within the first year of funding) is potential financial assistance for rent and utilities through Shawnee’s own CoC.

“That would be a homeless prevention type of step, but that would give us something to work with that we don’t have currently, and it’s hard to put together,” he said.

Next step

Harkins said the next step is getting formal documents sent to the city from HUD and brought to City Commissioners for approval and adoption (potentially in the August agenda).

Watch for updates.