Two men from Texas bought more than a dozen properties across Oklahoma restricted to low-income Oklahomans. In Tulsa, they are booting out the very people the properties are meant to serve. Listen above or read below for a transcript.
Read the story from Oklahoma Watch.
ZACH BOBLITT: This is 89.5 KWGS and I’m Zach Boblitt. A father and son from Texas are buying up property in Tulsa meant for low-income tenants and booting them out. I sat down with Elizabeth Caldwell who wrote the story for Oklahoma Watch.
ZB: Hey Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH CALDWELL: Hey Zach.
ZB: So your story deals with a program meant to make housing more affordable in the United States. Tell us about that program.
EC: Yeah, so it’s called the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, or lie-tech. And what LIHTC does is, landlords agree to keep some of their apartments or units affordable in exchange for tax credits. This isn't a deduction, it's a credit, it's a payment. This is a really important program according to HUD, or the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD calls LIHTC the single most important program for developing affordable housing in the United States.
ZB: And this program is going to get more popular, isn’t it?
EC: Yes. President Trump increased funding for the program and made it easier for landlords to get involved, so, it stands to reason, there’s going to be a lot more people interested in this program. It used to be a little hard to qualify but in 2026 it won’t be as difficult due to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
ZB: In your story, there’s some questions around the abuse of LIHTC. There’s a father and a son from Texas who’ve actually bought up these designated properties in Tulsa and are effectively evicting the low-income tenants the program is meant for.
EC: Yeah, that’s what’s happening. Sylvia Aguilar is one person effectively being evicted, she’s a 36-year-old mother of a first grader. And she got a notice on her door along with a lot of other people at Gable Hills Apartments near Sand Springs. The letter said that her rent was increasing $300 and Tulsa Housing Authority who manages her voucher program can’t cover the increase due to Trump’s budget cuts. Aguilar contacted Channel 2, where I first saw the story. Here she is talking about that decision to reach out to the news.
SYLVIA AGUILAR: I’m like, okay, we need help, I need to reach out. I need to get the word out that they’re doing this to everybody. Because, sorry, I’m about to get emotional, because there’s just so many people, there’s so many people that I love out here. We have been out here for three years and I’ve become really close to some of these people.
EC: I should say, Aguilar got her voucher because she was living in a domestic violence shelter, so she was really happy to get out of there and into her own place. She had a friend with her for support during our interview. Hayley Martin told me she thinks this effective eviction of voucher recipients is just discrimination against poor people that is becoming more common with ultra-wealthy people in power.
HAYLEY MARTIN: They want to criminalize mental health and addiction, and, basically anybody who’s in a hole, if they’re trying to get out of it, they’re trying to make sure you can’t, and that is very scary to me. They’re breaking people’s leases here to get them out of here, the housing vouchers.
EC: And we have to hear from River, who is Aguilar’s six-year-old son. He told me a kind of a funny story about how he found the rent increase letter on the door actually.
RIVER AGUILAR: And that night whenever the note was on the door, I was the one who picked it up. And I didn’t want it to get lost ‘cause anytime I put something somewhere, I lose it. So I brought it in the bathroom with me ‘cause I had to go to the bathroom really bad.
ZB: The story got more complicated after you talked to them, didn’t it?
EC: Yeah, so on the deed for Gable Hills there was this affordability restriction. Gable Hills is legally required to be affordable housing until 2039.
ZB: How does that work?
EC: It’s because of LIHTC. So the previous owners of the property got these tax credits. The property became a LIHTC property in 1999, there’s this like this 60-page agreement that's referenced on the deed. The credits are distributed over a 10-year period, and the people who own the building now bought it in 2024. So those credits are gone. But because the previous owners probably got millions, the property is legally required to stay affordable housing until 2039.
ZB: So that would make the rent increase unacceptable?
EC: Maybe. LIHTC has a pretty complicated rent formula. But what is out of bounds is not accepting vouchers. The rules of LIHTC say that landlords are required to accept vouchers.
ZB: In the story, you say this isn’t just happening at this one complex, either, there are multiple complexes involved in Tulsa, and some of them are senior communities.
EC: Yeah, so this father and son, Asa and Philip Cascavilla, through their company Vickery Development, they also bought Edgewood at the Gables and Crestview Senior Duplexes. These are both communities for elderly people in Tulsa. And people with vouchers in both of those communities, some of them, you know, disabled, in their 80’s, 90’s, they got these letters too. And the several I talked to were really scared.
ZB: And it’s not just Tulsa, either. You did a little driving to Coweta and Pryor.
EC: The Cascavillas own about a dozen LIHTC properties in Oklahoma from Ardmore to Stillwater. And when I visited these two closer to Tulsa I found that the tenants there said they were paying full price, which is subjective, but they were not aware of any discount to their rents, they were not aware they were living on a LIHTC property, and I could not find anyone who was on a voucher before the managers called the police on me.
ZB: Wow, they called the police.
EC: After I visited the first property, they were on the lookout for me, and they caught me pretty quickly on my second visit to one of these properties.
ZB: These landlords, the Cascavillas, they do not have a very good history with being in compliance with this program.
EC: No. Just a few years ago in 2022, the father, Philip, was fined more than $100,000 for charging tenants too much under LIHTC rules in Texas. But despite that, the son, who says he is a Christian on social media and who actually sits on the board of Dallas Christian School, wrote an article for a surfing website where he talked about flying around in his private jet on the weekends, so you can infer what you will about their financial situation.
ZB: What do you think is next?
EC: Well, I contacted the regulatory agency, which is the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency. They said they will be doing more research on the properties. This is what Corey Bornemann with OHFA told me when I called.
COREY BORNEMANN: Oh yeah, no. We take allegations such as this very seriously. We’re certainly going to do some research on these properties.
ZB: And what does Tulsa Housing Authority say?
EC: Well, they’ve been telling people like Sylvia Aguilar to just move, which is very distressing to her, they only gave her 60 days. Let’s just hear from her one more time.
SA: It’s just a lot of change coming. And it’s really scary.
EC: I asked THA if they thought telling low-income folks living on properties really meant for them to move is ethical, and they declined to answer. I should also mention the voucher waitlist is closed in Tulsa due to high demand, you can’t even get on the list anymore, so many people need affordable housing here. And people like Aguilar aren’t sure what they’re going to do, she started a GoFundMe and she’s thinking about contacting a lawyer.
ZB: Thanks for filling us in, Elizabeth.
EC: Thanks for listening, Zach.
