Tulsa needs to increase its housing supply by 55% to meet the city’s demand over the next decade, city and state leaders were told Monday.
More than two dozen area lawmakers and Tulsa City Councilors met during a special meeting Monday at City Hall. Mayor Monroe Nichols continues moving to increase the city’s housing supply, but housing experts told councilors and lawmakers more needs to be done.
Only 830 residences were built per year from 2000-2021 in Tulsa, according to a study shown during the meeting. To meet demand, the city needs to produce 1,290 residences per year. Tulsa is far from alone — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates a national deficit of over 4.5 million homes, owing to underbuilding following the 2007-2009 economic recession. Rent in Tulsa has continued to rise in recent years. A 2023 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development study showed the average rent in Tulsa is $1,352 per month.
Nichols campaigned on achieving “functional zero homelessness” in Tulsa by 2030, a feat that would require the construction of thousands of new homes.
Tulsa’s existing housing stock consists of 60% detached houses, while the remaining 40% is split between smaller townhouses, condos, duplexes and apartments, Tulsa Development Authority Commissioner Jennifer Griffin said during the meeting. Most homes in the city have three bedrooms, Griffin said, but almost 70% of Tulsa households contain two or fewer people.
The result is a city’s housing supply out of whack, with many Tulsans living in residences that are either too big or too small for their needs.
“This drives up costs,” Griffin said. “And it makes downsizing difficult.”
Griffin shared a study that showed 63% of respondents said they would be willing to live in a townhouse or condo if it were financially possible. She said about 60% of Tulsa is currently zoned for townhouses or condos. Yet those structures make up only 3% of Tulsa’s housing supply.
Townhouses are often more cost-effective than a detached home. They can be built on smaller lots and can be cheaper to maintain than a single-family home. But Oklahoma is one of just five states, including California, Minnesota, Maine and Pennsylvania, that require fire sprinkler systems in townhouses, adding a significant cost to new construction. Ending that mandate would be one way to quickly and cost-effectively increase the city’s housing supply, she said.
Rep. Suzanne Schreiber, D-Tulsa, told The Frontier she sought to change that requirement last year for small home-based childcare businesses in Oklahoma, but was met with pushback from fire departments and fire marshals, and her bill ultimately failed. She has an interim study planned in October to look at the issue again.
“When I ran my bill last year, I got calls from lots of smaller and mid-size builders who said they were making decisions not to build based on nothing but the cost of fire suppression,” she said. “We’ve got to get rid of some of these regulations that aren’t creating additional safety protections for residents, and are only creating costs and barriers.”
Rep. Stan May, R-Broken Arrow, said the pushback was because anything that makes a residence less safe in a fire will make insurance rates rise.
“Keeping those low is important,” May said. “Or else you start hearing from a lot of upset constituents.”
But there are ways to do that without requiring sprinkler systems, Griffin said. Sprinkler systems aren’t designed to save buildings, she said; they’re designed to suppress fire long enough for people to exit a building. But fire-rated drywall can serve the same purpose for less cost. And in Tulsa, a significant portion of the city doesn’t have the water pressure to maintain sprinkler systems anyway.
Another change Griffin suggested was increasing the types of developments that fall under Oklahoma’s residential codes. Currently, only houses and duplexes are covered by the simpler and less restrictive residential code. Compared to nearby Dallas, where complexes holding up to eight families fall under the residential code, Tulsa is lagging behind, she said.
In Oklahoma, the International Building Code, also known as the commercial building code, covers businesses and larger multi-family complexes.
Reclassifying small apartment complexes under less-restrictive building codes could speed up development and make it less costly, meeting Nichols’ desire to rapidly increase Tulsa’s housing supply.
“If we want to be competitive in all the things we’re offering as a state, we need to have housing supply that meets the needs of individuals and of the employers we’re hoping to bring to the state,” Schreiber said.