2024 Housing Series Presentations

Tulsa Planning Office staff have developed a series of educational presentations for the Tulsa City Council around the topic of Tulsa’s changing housing trends and preferences, demographics, regulations and their effects on housing production, and housing types.

Video recordings of previous presentations, along with the presentation slides, are available to the right.

Detailed Information

Much of the data around Tulsa’s changing housing trends, preferences, and demographics surprised many people. For example, 36% of Tulsans live alone, and nearly 70% of Tulsa households include only one or two people. Perhaps the most shocking figure is that 74% of Tulsa households do not include children under the age of 18, meaning three-quarters of Tulsa households are not composed of traditional, nuclear families.

In fact, the City of Tulsa has the smallest average household size in the metro area, at 2.41 people per household, and the second smallest household size among large cities in the region. On average, renter households in Tulsa even smaller, at 2.14 people, compared to homeowner households at 2.46 people.

Meanwhile, more than half of all housing units in Tulsa contain three or more bedrooms, 60% of all housing units in Tulsa are detached homes, and housing with more than one unit is prohibited in 84% of the city. 65% of the city is zoned exclusively for single-unit detached homes by right, just 16% allows multi-unit housing (duplexes and up) by right, and 19% is zoned exclusively for nonresidential uses. Of the land in Tulsa that allows housing, only 20% allows multi-unit housing by right, while the other 80% exclusively allows detached homes by right, regardless of property owners’ preferences.

This severely restricts our ability to add enough housing units to keep up with demand – as reported in the 2023 Tulsa Citywide Housing Assessment, there is pent-up demand for 4,000 additional housing units in Tulsa today, with an overall anticipated demand of 12,900 units in the next 10 years. Currently, the city only permits an average of 830 housing units per year, a number that needs to increase by 55% to a total of 1,290 per year to meet demand.

Compounding the problem is the fact that only 8% of land in Tulsa allows Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) by right. ADUs are also referred to as backyard cottages, garage apartments, carriage houses, mother-in-law flats, and granny flats. ADUs accommodate new housing units while preserving the look and feel of existing neighborhoods, allow efficient use of the city’s existing housing stock and infrastructure, and provide housing options that accommodate varying income levels, changing household sizes, life stages, and lifestyle needs. In addition, they provide a means for residents—particularly seniors, single parents, and empty-nesters—to remain in their homes and neighborhoods and obtain extra income, security, companionship, and assistance.

In 67% of the city, ADUs are only allowed if granted a special exception by the Board of Adjustment, an extra process that requires a separate application, fees, and public hearings. Approval is not guaranteed. Prior to the creation of the Neighborhood Infill Overlay (NIO), NIO-2, and the Neighborhood Character Overlay, which expanded where ADUs are allowed by right, only 4% percent of land in Tulsa allowed ADUs by right.

Middle housing options, neighborhood-scale buildings that include duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, courtyard apartments, cottage courts, townhouses, and small apartment buildings, are few and far between in Tulsa, and as previously mentioned, are illegal to build in 84% of the city, despite a land owner’s preferences. Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes comprise only 7% of our existing housing stock, and townhouses only 3%. In addition, new multi-unit housing units as a percentage of all housing construction in Tulsa has decreased in the past four years, as the share of detached homes has increased.

This contrasts with respondents from citywide housing preference surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020. In the first survey, 63% of 1,778 respondents said they would live in a townhouse, 50% said they would live in a duplex, triplex, or quadplex, and 52% said they would live in an apartment building with 10 or more units. 71% said they would like to live in a detached house, indicating that close to 30% prefer other housing types.

In a second survey, when asked if they agree that the City of Tulsa should allow specific housing types in more neighborhoods, 63% of 1,400 respondents supported expanding where duplexes are allowed, 48% supported the same for triplexes and quadplexes, 67% for townhouses, 60% for courtyard or garden apartments, 49% for walk-up or mixed-use apartments, and 68% supported ADUs/backyard cottages.

About half (49%) of households in Tulsa are renter households, and younger Tulsans (ages 15-24) are much more likely to rent than own their home.

Though homeowner households comprise about half (51%) of all households in Tulsa, homeowners own 62% of all vehicles. Conversely, renter households also comprise about half (49%) of all households in Tulsa but only own 38% of all vehicles in the city. Renter households in Tulsa are five times more likely to not have access to a car, and those who do are twice as likely to have access only one car, compared to homeowner households. More than 13,500 households in Tulsa do not have access to a vehicle.

In spite of Tulsa’s small average household size with few children and high percentage of one- and two-person households, we have high mandatory parking requirements for residences of all kinds (and all other land uses). Regardless of whether a property owner actually needs that much parking, they are required to build it. Parking spaces and their driveways and drive aisles take up a large amount of space, and often, the amount of parking required for duplexes and small apartment buildings is so large that it will not even fit on the lot. Parking is also expensive to build and maintain, and those costs are passed on to renters and homeowners. So much parking also pushes buildings and uses farther and farther apart, encouraging even more driving and adding to city infrastructure costs. Our parking requirements have only been modified slightly since 1970, while development, transportation, housing and employment patterns and preferences have changed dramatically in the same time.

In addition, parking needs are very difficult for cities to adequately predict and appropriately regulate. Because of the complexity and difficulty, most cities have adopted parking standards recommended in outdated manuals that were themselves based on a very small amount of questionable and inconclusive data. Cities across the country (and the world) are beginning to recognize the problems created by government-mandated parking, and are taking steps to either reduce or eliminate these requirements. Home builders and business owners typically know much more about their customers and specific parking needs than the cities who regulate parking.

As of August 2024, nearly 3,000 communities in all 50 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico have implemented reduced parking requirements or completely eliminated requirements (visit Parking Reform Network for more information). At least 74 municipalities and counties in 27 states across the country have completely removed mandatory parking requirements for all uses, including small towns, suburbs, and mid-size and large cities. Examples include Raleigh, NC; Lexington, KY; Richmond, VA; Birmingham, AL; Spokane, WA; Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN; Austin, TX; Branson, MO; Gainesville, FL; South Bend, IN; Ann Arbor, MI; Story County, IA; and Durham County, NC. Dallas, TX is currently considering eliminating parking requirements.

More than 160 other communities reduced their parking requirements citywide, including Overland Park, KS; Sioux Falls, SD; Abilene and College Station, TX; Provo, UT; Las Cruces, NM; Frankfort, KY; Gilbert, AZ; and Blue Springs and St. Charles, MO. 

Locally, Pryor, Norman, and Fayetteville have eliminated parking requirements for commercial uses. Fayetteville has several reductions for residential uses, as well.

Minimum lot area and minimum lot area per unit are two measures of the minimum amount of land legally required by the zoning code in order to build housing, again, regardless of the preference of the property owner. As shown in the second presentation in this series, for the most part, our current minimum lot sizes are much larger than lots were in the past, which drives up the cost of housing and makes building more difficult, especially on infill lots, by requiring more land for each unit. Minimum lot area requirements and high requirements for minimum lot widths also push buildings and uses farther apart, encouraging more driving and adding to city infrastructure and maintenance costs.

Unlocking Abundant Housing Construction

There are many regulatory obstacles to building new homes, including regulations found in the zoning code, building code, stormwater requirements, water and sewer infrastructure requirements, and extra approval processes for housing types other than detached houses that create a great deal of uncertainty for home builders. There are also several non-regulatory factors that make new housing construction more difficult and costly, including:

• Interest rates
• Lot, building, and other standards imposed by lenders/financiers
• Bias against renters
• Bad landlords
• Lack of comparable properties for appraisals (i.e., an appraisal gap)
• Land speculation
• Low holding costs for vacant lots
• Construction labor shortage
• Shortage of small-scale developers
• Little knowledge of products other than detached houses or large complexes, among all groups in the process: designers, builders, lenders, real estate agents, and officials
• Nationwide dependence on increasing home values for personal savings, retirement, and healthcare, and national economic effects of the housing market
• Bias against all other housing types in established neighborhoods
• Expectations of no change in neighborhoods at all, ever, of any kind
• …and many more

Imagine that each one of these constraints is a deadbolt lock on a closed door. It will take all of these deadbolts to be unlocked in order to open the door to a healthy, functioning housing construction environment. Zoning is just one of many obstacles, but it is one that is within our control to remedy. Reforming the zoning code alone cannot fix the housing crisis, but it is a necessary step.

Data: A majority of the information in the presentations comes from the US Census Bureau, including the 2022 American Community Survey and the 2020 Census. Charts and figures in the presentations reference specific table numbers where the data may be found. Other sources include City of Tulsa permits, surveys conducted by the Tulsa Planning Office in 2019 and 2020, Tulsa Citywide Housing Assessment (2023), Tulsa Housing Strategy (2024), Tulsa Zoning Code and Zoning Map, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Greater Tulsa Area Realtors and MLS.