The problem nobody actually solved
Thirty years of enforcement, design competitions, and good intentions — and the person carrying everything they own through a parking lot is still on their own.
The weight nobody sees
Every system designed to help a person experiencing homelessness — shelters, job programs, medical clinics, benefits offices — assumes one thing: that the person can leave their belongings somewhere safe.
That assumption is wrong for the vast majority of unsheltered Americans.
A 2016 survey by the Minneapolis Downtown Improvement District found that 75% of homeless individuals named carrying their belongings as their top concern after housing itself. The same survey found that 75% experienced chronic neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, and respiratory issues from the physical burden. Not metaphorical weight. Actual, daily, cumulative damage to a human body that has no choice but to carry fifty or sixty pounds everywhere it goes.
The consequences cascade. You can't fill out paperwork at Social Security if you're watching a cart outside. You can't take a shower at a shelter if your bag is unattended in the lobby. You can't show up to a job site carrying bedding. You can't sit in a waiting room at the VA if leaving means losing your medication.
Homeless service practitioners call it the “Three P's” — pets, possessions, and partners — the primary reasons people refuse shelter entry. Seattle University's “Shut Out” study identified 70 distinct barriers homeless individuals face when seeking emergency shelter. Belongings restrictions are among the most cited. California law now defines Low Barrier Navigation Centers as facilities that must include storage of personal items. Washington State has required every county to offer at least one low-barrier shelter since 2018.
The City of Portland's official Day Storage page states it directly: “Lack of secure storage is a huge barrier for homeless residents in seeking services, treatment, employment, or seeing to other daily activities.”
"I missed out on job interviews because of the heavy load. Carrying around my baggage or my personal belongings, it wore out every part of my well-being: my mental, my physical and my spiritual, not to mention my emotional."
Greg McCormack, Executive Director of Front Steps in Austin, described the mechanism plainly: when people have a place to store their possessions — their IDs, their birth certificates — they are more likely to go to a job, to a medical appointment. Without that, they stay put. That's why people in encampments don't go anywhere. Not because they don't want to. Because they can't.
Phoenix's Key Campus reported that before its storage program existed, individuals were choosing not to receive services rather than part with their belongings. People were declining medical care, mental health treatment, and meals — not out of refusal, but out of rational self-preservation.
When your documents disappear, so does your future
A birth certificate. A Social Security card. A DD-214. A driver's license. A prescription. A custody order. These are not sentimental objects. They are the keys to every door a person needs to walk through to rebuild their life — and they are routinely lost, confiscated, or destroyed.
Replacing a lost ID costs $100 to $250 in fees — plus weeks of processing time, during which the person cannot access the benefits, housing, or employment that ID unlocks. For a person with no fixed address, no internet access, and no safe place to receive mail, the replacement process is a bureaucratic maze designed for people with homes.
Think Dignity in San Diego recognized this early. Their ID Bank securely stores vital documents for approximately 2,500 people — because protecting a document costs almost nothing, and losing one costs almost everything.
The national trend is criminalization
On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson that cities may enforce anti-camping ordinances even without available shelter beds. Since then, the ACLU has tracked over 320 bills criminalizing homelessness introduced across the country, with approximately 220 passing.
President Trump signed Executive Order 14321 in July 2025, shifting federal funding away from Housing First toward treatment-first programs, prioritizing cities that enforce camping bans, and gutting the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.
Oklahoma's own homeless population reached 5,467 in the 2024 point-in-time count — a 17.6% increase in a single year. The state's rate of 13 per 10,000 is higher than Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, or Missouri. Despite rising numbers, Oklahoma lawmakers are pursuing punitive measures that risk jeopardizing federal HUD and FEMA funding.
Lawton passed its anti-camping ordinance in October 2024. First offense: a warning. After that: misdemeanor charges, $50 fines, up to 15 days in jail. In September 2025, the ordinance expanded to cover private property.
The pattern is consistent. Dallas banned carts; people switched to baby strollers. Federal Way, Washington, imposed fines for pushing carts on public sidewalks. A Hawaii state legislator took a sledgehammer to homeless people's carts on camera. At least nine states have enacted specific cart-theft laws with fines reaching $2,500 and jail time up to six months.
None of these efforts provided a single alternative. They made it harder to be poor — and more expensive for everyone.
Storage policies without storage programs are meaningless
Most cities that conduct encampment clearings have policies requiring them to store seized belongings. A ProPublica investigation reviewing records from 14 cities found that these policies are almost universally ignored in practice.
Confiscated property routinely includes IDs, medications — including hepatitis C treatments costing $40,000 per course — wheelchairs, insulin, seizure medication, family photographs, and legal documents.
A University of Colorado study predicted that encampment sweeps could contribute to a 15–25% increase in deaths among drug-injecting populations over ten years. A Hawaii survey found 57% of encampment residents lost identification during sweeps.
Cities that destroy belongings face multimillion-dollar settlements. Lavan v. City of Los Angeles resulted in an $822,000 settlement. Mitchell v. City of Los Angeles cost $645,000 and required 24-hour advance notice, 30-minute warnings, and property storage with identification. Kincaid v. City of Fresno — where the city used compactors to immediately crush possessions including an urn containing a grandchild's ashes — settled for $2.35 million.
The courts are clear: homeless people's property is constitutionally protected under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Grants Pass ruling did not change this. Providing proactive storage is both constitutionally sound and practically necessary.
The cost of a bin vs. the cost of doing nothing
| Category | Annual Cost Per Person |
|---|---|
| Secure storage (Portland model) | $180–$511 |
| Emergency shelter bed (national avg) | $27,589–$37,312 |
| ER visits (5/year, homeless avg) | ~$18,500 |
| Criminalization cycle (Central FL study) | $31,065 |
| Federal incarceration | $44,090 |
| Chronic homelessness (public costs) | $35,578 avg; up to $111,000 |
| One camp cleanup (one-time) | $50,000–$500,000 |
San Diego's Project 25 documented the highest public-service users costing $111,000 annually before housing; afterward, the median dropped to under $12,000 — a 235% return on investment. Secure storage alone doesn't achieve that, but it's the first step in every city where the model has worked. At $180 per person per year, it is 70 to 200 times cheaper than the public cost of chronic homelessness.
The data is clear. The cost is low. The need is now.
Help us bring Lawton's first secure storage program to the people who need it.