On a Friday morning in August, Amy Behar waters her garden in front of her midtown Tulsa home.
The front garden is full of flowers. The one in the back has vegetables, which Behar harvests with her mom and her aunt.
“We all live here together, and we just make things work,” she said.
Behar has a condition that gives her uncontrollable muscle spasms so she can’t work a full-time job. But the family is still able to make ends meet because she bought the house in 2017.
“If I had to buy a house today, there’s no way I could,” she said.
According to the Greater Tulsa Association of Realtors, average home prices have increased by $117,000 since 2020.
It was one of many statistics presented to city councilors over a three-week period in July in light of a housing shortage in the city. Housing Solutions Tulsa estimated in March of last year that the city would need almost 13,000 new homes to meet demand by 2033. But there are restrictions on what kinds of housing can be built in Tulsa.

‘We just simply don’t allow most housing types in most parts of the city’
Only 20 percent of city land allows multi-unit housing, like apartments. City records show builders have consistently built less and less of this kind of housing over the last four years.
“We just simply don’t allow most housing types in most parts of the city,” said Daniel Jeffries, a city planner who gave a presentation to city councilors in July.
Jeffries said the restrictions fuel an increase in home prices since more types of homes would mean greater price variation.
He also said the strict zoning isn’t a fluke.
“Across the country starting in the ‘50s and ‘60s, a lot of zoning codes were amended to reflect a real focus on nothing other than detached houses,” he said.
But that doesn’t necessarily reflect the kind of housing that people want today. More than half of Tulsans polled in a 2019 housing survey said they would live in duplexes or townhomes. At the time, though, only 7 percent of homes in Tulsa were duplexes, and only 3 percent were townhouses. Construction of these kinds of homes has annually stayed below 10% of new homes, according to city records.

Officials say another factor in the lack of this kind of housing is that many Tulsa residents don’t want multi-unit housing in their neighborhoods.
“They don’t understand those housing types, and they’re fearful of them,” said Susan Miller, another city planner who made presentations to the city council.
Resetting minds, using what’s there
Whatever kind of housing gets built, city planners say Tulsa will have to increase the number of homes the city approves for construction by more than 50 percent each year to achieve an average pace that would resolve the housing shortage.
Earlier this year, officials estimated 10 percent of the city’s housing shortage could be addressed by creating living spaces in unused buildings downtown.
Councilor Christian Bengel says developers could make use of vacant structures, like abandoned hotels.
“There’s enough places in the city where we can do this stuff –but be mindful of the stuff we already have and try to activate the stuff we already have before we get overly excited about trying to build more stuff,” he said.

Some Tulsans think another option would be to use some of the city’s vacant houses.
“If there was somebody that would buy the houses and they would rent them out like these people are doing now, it would help a lot of people get housing,” says Jody Ortiz, who lives in a neighborhood off of Peoria Avenue just west of downtown. “There’s a lot of houses that are just boarded up.” Councilors are expected to consider modifying the city’s zoning code and possibly vote on amendments later this year.
In the meantime, Miller hopes the city’s housing data challenges notions about what kinds of homes Tulsans want and are willing to accept, including multi-unit housing.
“We just really wanted to reset people’s minds,” Miller said. “People really do want to live in things like this.”