Lawton Mayor hosts forum on homelessness

LAWTON, Okla. (KSWO) - Lawton Mayor Stan Booker hosted a forum on homelessness Thursday.

The forum was held at City Hall and featured several speakers from various community organizations.

Discussions were focused on homelessness in Southwest Oklahoma, looking at housing issues and ways to support homeless citizens.

Also discussed was a $1.327 million HOME-ARP grant awarded to the City of Lawton, and how that could be put towards people.

Roxanne Wiseman-Hart with the United Way of Southwest Oklahoma said that funding is vital point in any discussion of homelessness,.

“The need in this community is astronomical,” she said. “What we don’t have, all of our social service agencies, we don’t have the funds to prevent homelessness, and when there is homelessness we don’t have the funds to intervene.”

Proposed solutions included putting money towards building affordable housing, and making use of empty lots throughout the City of Lawton.

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