Bridges of Moore celebrated the ribbon-cutting for the project, which houses students in duplexes equipped with bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens. Beyond shelter, the program provides transportation to school and helps students plan for life after graduation.

"If you're worried about being abused or neglected, if you're street homeless, then you're not worried about math and you're not worried about your English paper," said Stacy Bruce, executive director of Bridges of Oklahoma.

The effort builds on the model of Bridges of Norman, which helped Jefte Lozano when he was a teenager living out of his car.

"I found myself living out of my car in 30-degree weather," Lozano said. "I was very embarrassed, and I am glad that didn't let that stop me, because Bridges transformed and changed my life. It gave me a second chance. I started as a kid living out of his car, and now I work for one of the top three architecture firms in Oklahoma."

Lozano said the program ensured he went to college and had funding for housing. Seeing it expand to Moore, he said, is the realization of a long-held hope.

"I dreamed of this day — the day when there would be another Bridges, so that more students could have the same opportunity that I had," he said.

Robert Romines, superintendent of Moore Public Schools, described meeting one of the village's first residents.

"Meeting our first student that moved in, her first comment was, 'You just don't have any clue or understand what this means to me,'" Romines said. "And I said, 'You're right, I don't.' I always had a bed, I always had a pillow to lay my head on at night."

The opening comes as housing costs and instability continue to strain working families across the Oklahoma City metro, and as schools increasingly find themselves on the front lines of youth homelessness. For students without a safe place to sleep, the new village offers something advocates say no classroom can supply on its own: a foundation steady enough to make schoolwork possible.