TULSA, OKLA. (KTUL) — A Tulsa nonprofit is working to shed light on an often-overlooked piece of the housing crisis—access to stable housing for formerly incarcerated individuals.
With affordable housing already in short supply, people with criminal records face added hurdles in securing a place to live, further compounding the issue of housing insecurity.
Shawna Detmer, Site Director for the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) in Tulsa, has seen firsthand how difficult reentry into society can be—particularly when it comes to finding housing.
“They’ll need to pass a background check, essentially to enter housing,” Detmer explains. “And a lot of times they’re eliminated right off the bat.”
Oklahoma continues to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation, according to a report from the Prison Policy Initiative.
While the CEO focuses on helping justice-impacted individuals find transitional jobs, Detmer stresses that employment alone isn’t always enough.
“Stable, safe housing is really the foundation that everything else is built off of,” she says. “Folks need that in order to reenter society successfully.”
CEO Tulsa serves hundreds of formerly incarcerated people each year. However, Detmer says at least half of them are actively struggling with housing, and that’s a conservative estimate.
“We’d love for people to come in and we address that barrier right away but there’s so many variables involved in that, based on the charge that people have, or based on how long they’ve been gone, whether or not they have family support to help them get into a place, whether or not they have a conviction that kind of bars them from living anywhere,” Detmer says.
In 2023, the Tulsa Housing Authority (THA) amended its policies to reduce some of these barriers.
The agency shortened its criminal background check lookback period from five years to two, and removed 34 of 47 categories that previously could have disqualified applicants from public housing or voucher programs.
While Detmer acknowledges this progress, she says more work is needed. “I do think this population is overlooked,” she says. “To those who are nervous about justice-involved people living in their apartment complexes or neighborhoods, I would just say—we’re just like everyone else. Everyone deserves a second chance to have safe, stable housing.”
For those navigating reentry and struggling to find housing, Detmer recommends looking for low-barrier housing programs and seeking out privately owned rental properties.