Stitt’s Operation Safe Supports Common Sense Homelessness Efforts

Paul Webster

Issue Areas

On September 4, 2025, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt launched Operation Safe, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol-led effort to guide Tulsa’s homeless population into housing or treatment facilities and rid Tulsa’s streets of hazardous materials and debris. Since then, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) has been busy, clearing 21 homeless encampments from Tulsa over the first weekend and removing more than 500,000 pounds of discarded and potentially dangerous materials from encampments around underpasses, highways, state buildings, and other state-controlled land. 

Homelessness has become an increasingly pressing issue for metropolitan areas across the country, and Tulsa is no exception. Tulsa’s homeless population has grown by 33% since 2021 and 45% since 2016. Chronic homelessness, a categorization of homelessness for long-standing homeless individuals with disabilities like substance abuse disorder (SUD) or severe mental illness (SMI), has increased by 39% in the past year alone.

Just as Tulsa’s homeless population has been growing, so have concerns by the public. A 2023 study of the Tulsa metropolitan area by the Cicero Institute found that 70 percent of residents consider homeless encampments in public places to be a threat to public safety. 75 percent of respondents believed that homeless people do not have a right to camp in public places when shelters are available, and 84 percent of respondents found it more compassionate to move homeless individuals to available shelters, rather than allowing them to camp wherever they choose. The majority of residents thought individuals with unmanaged SMI, like schizophrenia, should be legally compelled to enter a healthcare setting and believed that mental health and substance abuse programs are more helpful than subsidized housing in reducing long-term, chronic homelessness.

Critics who oppose Operation Safe repeat the misleading rhetoric of nonprofit groups claiming that Stitt’s actions criminalize homelessness, rather than guide homeless people towards the help they need, and push to dedicate more and more taxpayer resources to a failed strategy. 

Operation Safe tracks the reform policies of Cicero Institute by directing those with severe mental illness and substance abuse disorders towards the specialized help they need, and away from one-size-fits-all Housing First solutions. This approach helps homeless people—and all Tulsans. As emphasized by President Trump in his executive order last month, failure to address the situation would put federal grants to Oklahoma at risk. Governor Stitt has repeatedly urged Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols to get control of the situation in Tulsa, and Operation SAFE deploys much-needed manpower and resources to aid the City of Tulsa and help those living and dying on the street.  

The approach taken by the OHP is to offer housing and treatment while also making it clear that camping on public land is illegal.  Far from criminalizing homelessness, the OHP is coordinating with groups to get homeless people off the streets and into facilities protecting them from the hazards of an unsheltered lifestyle—actions that also  benefit the businesses and residents of Tulsa. Unsheltered homeless people have a threefold increase in mortality rates compared to their sheltered counterparts. More than 40 percent of Tulsa’s homeless population have mental health conditions and are in desperate need of professional treatment. The OHP is directing homeless people towards help, and away from the dangers inherent to living unsheltered on the streets. Governor Stitt is offering Mayor Nichols the manpower, resources, and initiative necessary to get homeless people off the streets and into safety. After more than twenty years of approaches to homelessness that failed to reduce the number of homeless people, the federal and state focus will now prioritize treatment, public safety, and accountability.