On a Friday morning in August, Amy Behar is watering her garden in front of her home in Midtown Tulsa.

The front garden is full of flowers. The back garden is full of vegetables that Behar harvests with her mother and aunt.

“We all live together here and we just make it work,” she said.

Behar suffers from uncontrollable muscle spasms and is unable to work full-time, but the family still makes ends meet because they bought the house in 2017.

“If I had to buy a house today, there’s no way I could do it,” she said.

According to the Greater Tulsa Association of Realtors, average home prices have increased by $117,000 since 2020.

That was one of many statistics presented to city councilors over three weeks in July amid the city’s housing shortage. Housing Solutions Tulsa estimated last March that the city would need nearly 13,000 new homes by 2033 to meet demand. But there are restrictions on what type of housing can be built in Tulsa.

“Most forms of housing are simply not allowed in most parts of the city”

Only 20 percent of the city’s land area is suitable for multi-family housing such as apartments. City records show that developers have been building less and less of this type of housing over the past four years.

“We simply don’t allow most forms of housing in most parts of the city,” said city planner Daniel Jeffries, who gave a presentation to city councilors in July.

Jeffries said the restrictions would lead to a rise in housing prices because more types of homes meant greater price differences.

He also said that the strict zoning was no coincidence.

“Starting in the ’50s and ’60s, many zoning codes across the country were changed to focus exclusively on single-family homes,” he said.

But that doesn’t necessarily reflect the type of housing people want today. More than half of Tulsans surveyed in a 2019 housing survey said they lived in duplexes or townhouses. But at the time, only 7 percent of Tulsa’s homes were duplexes and just 3 percent were townhouses. Construction of these types of homes remains below 10% of new homes annually, according to city records.

Screenshot

/

City of Tulsa

Another reason for the shortage of this type of housing, authorities say, is that many Tulsa residents do not want multi-family housing in their neighborhood.

“They don’t understand these types of housing and they’re afraid of them,” said Susan Miller, another urban planner who spoke to the city council.

Realign your mind and use what is there

Regardless of what type of housing is actually built, Tulsa needs to increase the number of homes the city approves for construction by more than 50 percent each year to achieve an average pace that could address the housing shortage, according to city planners.

Earlier this year, officials estimated that 10 percent of the city’s housing shortage could be addressed by creating housing in unused buildings in the city center.

City councillor Christian Bengel believes that developers could use vacant buildings, such as abandoned hotels.

“There are enough places in the city where we can do these things – but we should pay attention to the things we already have and try to activate the things we already have before we get too excited and try to build more things,” he said.

Some Tulsa residents think another option would be to utilize some of the city’s vacant homes.

“If there was someone buying the houses and renting them out like these people are doing now, it would help a lot of people find housing,” said Jody Ortiz, who lives in a neighborhood off Peoria Avenue west of downtown. “There are a lot of houses that are just boarded up.” City councilors are expected to consider changing the city’s building code and may vote on changes later this year.

In the meantime, Miller hopes the city’s housing data will challenge perceptions about what kind of housing Tulsa residents want and are willing to accept, including multifamily housing.

“We really wanted to change people’s minds,” Miller said. “People really want to live in these things.”