Richard White is the Housing Programs Manager at the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (ODMHSAS), where he administers much of the housing continuum—including Transitional Living Programs, Permanent Supportive Housing, and Rapid Rehousing—for individuals experiencing homelessness with serious mental illness and substance use disorders. A native of Annandale, Virginia, Richard holds a Master of Social Work from Missouri State University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Oklahoma. His prior service includes staff work with a Member of the U.S. Congress, technical contracting with the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense, and military service in the Oklahoma Army National Guard and United States Air Force.

Richard’s professional philosophy is grounded in the conviction that stable housing is not an endpoint but a foundation—that compassionate, evidence-based housing supports create the conditions under which recovery, dignity, and self-determination become possible for people with serious mental illness and substance use disorders. He developed a nationally recognized lived experience board for youth experiencing homelessness, centering first-hand expertise in programmatic decision-making, and has presented on youth homelessness at conferences nationally. His areas of expertise include lived experience governance, youth street outreach, housing case management, grant writing, and innovative housing models including host homes. He serves on Oklahoma’s Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth’s Homeless Children and Youth Steering Committee, and is a member of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work.

Outside of his professional work, Richard maintains a sustained personal and intellectual interest in Freudian, Kleinian, and Winnicottian psychoanalytic thought. He is also an avid video game enthusiast with a developing clinical interest in the use of video games as recovery tools for individuals with serious mental illness, particularly the capacity of role-playing game environments to provide safe, structured settings for processing traumatic experience.