As Tulsa pushes to add affordable housing and curb chronic homelessness, the city is poised to be a national leader in providing solutions to longstanding housing dilemmas, according to national and local Black real estate leaders.
“We see a lot of cities that have all of the programs, but there’s no alignment,” Ashley Thomas, national president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, told The Oklahoma Eagle. “There’s no collaboration, and so it doesn’t get off the ground.”
Based in Los Angeles, Thomas speaks from the perspective of broad experience working with cities across the country.
“When we look at city leadership, community leaders, private capital, public investments — all of those things seem to be working together in Tulsa,” he added. “Tulsa is on the same page … I think Tulsa can be an example for the rest of the country to follow.”
NAREB, an 80-year-old group created to give Black real estate agents a supportive trade organization, is conducting an eight-city national tour later this spring.
It’s choosing to cap the tour in Tulsa in early May because leaders see the city at a tipping point to become a model for affordable housing.
Local residential developer Marc Ruiz, owner of NextGen Capital, agrees with Thomas on the alignment between city agencies. Ruiz has worked with the PartnerTulsa Developer Community Roundtable seeking to create better alignment between developers and the city over the last six years. The effort has made headway.
“The process is 1,000% better,” Ruiz said. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get some of these alignments in place, and sometimes that is done just by getting out of our way.”
The improvements are largely due to expedited permitting to build residential homes. In the past, the process took four to eight weeks, while in surrounding cities it could happen in just 48 hours.
Ruiz said he moved his business to Sapulpa because of the red tape. But he is now building new construction in north Tulsa and looking for investors.
Instability in the Tulsa market
Tulsa-based NAREB president Rosalind Williams is more cautious about the local real estate market. In the past year, she’s seen deals fall through because of rising costs and the uncertainty created by federal government policies.
But Williams agrees Tulsa is at a tipping point. The local housing industry could swing toward stronger local home ownership and generational wealth building, she said.
She feels Tulsa could also continue a trend of allowing outside investors to convert homes into rentals with absentee corporate landlords —- and without building a sustainable neighborhood infrastructure.
“The problem is they’re selling and turning it into rental property instead of ownership,” Williams said. “Investors are going out and building 150 homes, and there’s no infrastructure.”
“The market is on skates,” she said. “We’re just in that ‘don’t know’ phase and it’s pretty scary.”
Thomas said NAREB has a good rapport with Mayor Monroe Nichols. His office has a strategy for attaining an affordable housing market, with a goal to build 6,000 affordable units by 2028. Since taking office a year ago, the city has reached about 22% of its goal, with 726 units completed and another 604 affordable units permitted, according to the City of Tulsa’s housing tracker.
Meetings for potential investors
At the end of its affordable housing tour May 2, NAREB will host a day of free one-on-one meetings with experts who can advise Tulsa investors. That includes property owners who want to build their portfolio to first time homebuyers.
Tulsans may reserve their spot online. Meetings will be held noon to 3 p.m. at the Tulsa Dream Center, 200 W. 46th Street N.
NAREB’s presenters will address changes in federal housing policy, long-standing barriers to ownership, property rights for heirs and discriminatory practices still embedded in the system. They will walk residents through the basics of buying a home and compare the long-term costs of owning versus renting, and even address how to remain in the home when payments are in arrears.
Thomas said their most popular session focuses on a lesser-known tool of using Section 8 federal assistance as mortgage support for homeownership, often for up to 15 years.
“That’s critical,” Thomas said, especially at a time when policy makers are debating the future of housing assistance programs. With more than 92,000 jobs lost in February, he said the goal is not just to create new homeowners but to keep current families housed.
“It does no good to put one new family in, and two families lose a home,” Thomas said. “Housing is more than shelter. It’s a gateway to building generational wealth.”
