OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma City Council this month voted unanimously to adopt an expansive Housing Affordability Implementation Plan (HAIP) to promote an increase in OKC’s housing stock and a decrease in inflated rents and home costs.
And the OKC Metro Association of Realtors enthusiastically supports it.
It lays out a 150-page plan for how the City can better oversee the housing market and better coordinate with both public and private funding and development, though the plan contains no specific policy initiatives or budget proposals.
Chief among the plan’s recommendations is the creation of a new directorial position within the Planning Department that will act as the primary coordinator of all of the City’s funding allocations, partnerships, and policies regarding housing across OKC.
City staff are currently working to create and define that new position following the City Council’s unanimous vote in favor of the HAIP at the January 14th meeting.
That vote was the culmination of work stretching back years in which the City conducted sweeping studies of the OKC housing market and worked with outside consultants to consider new approaches and draft the new HAIP.
“It feels good to be done, but also not done,” Oklahoma City Planning Director Geoffrey Butler told Free Press by phone this week, “because now we’re starting on a whole new journey.”
‘A tale of two cities’
Considerations for the new HAIP began following the City’s 2021 Housing Affordability Study, which showed a dramatic – and still growing – gap in OKC between inflating home prices and rents and the finances of renters and prospective homebuyers.
Using data points collected throughout 2019, the study showed roughly 28% of Oklahoma City’s population as “cost-burdened,” or spending 30% or more of their gross income on housing or rent.
That number is understood to have risen in years since by at least 9,000 new cost-burdened households, with more than 6,500 of those being rental homes.
Consultant David Schwartz from consulting firm Economic & Planning Systems, Inc. was brought on board by the City to help compile and draft the new HAIP and he presented the full plan proposal to the City Council at the January 14th meeting.
“The Housing Affordability Study pointed out a bit of a tale of two cities,” Schwartz told the council. “The city, in large part, is an affordable place to live, but that prosperity and that access to affordability and safe and habitable housing isn’t shared by all.”
Holistic approach
The new HAIP will serve as a blueprint for how the City can better address that increasing gap in housing affordability, beginning with the creation of the new City position that will take on a broad, largely open-ended role in coordinating all available housing resources and partnerships.
“This is really a new iteration or an evolution on our part,” Butler said. “This is really us trying to be more holistic and just have a more organized, thorough, comprehensive approach to it.”
That holistic approach is broken into three “stages” by the HAIP:
- Stage 1 establishes the new directorial role for housing and consolidates existing resources and partnerships while seeking new partnerships both local and national.
- Stage 2 begins considering and developing focused housing policies, such as streamlining and quickening housing development approvals, considering a revolving loan program for housing development and rehab, and even considering a Community Land Trust to possibly provide public land for new public housing.
- Stage 3 creates a continuously ongoing framework for executing and evaluating the new policies and partnerships, refining and modifying approaches through consistent housing market studies and overviews.
Increasing stock
A major focus of the HAIP’s recommendations is bridging and consolidating resources from across both public and private sector partnerships.
In addition to coordinating city, state, and federal housing funds for public projects, the plan also places a significant emphasis on encouraging more private housing development, an element in which Ward 8 Councilman Mark Stonecipher has been particularly interested.
“Some of the information that’s been provided to me recently is that cities that have continued to add to its housing stock have been able to lower the rent growth rates,” he said from the dais at the January 14th meeting. “So I think the need for increased housing stock is essential, and something we all really need to be focused on at this time.”
Butler agreed, saying by phone this week that a large part of the HAIP’s focus is on coordinating public funds like HUD funding and new allocations from the City’s upcoming General Obligation Bond to subsidize and incentivize homebuilders.
“We’re going to focus on getting the most bang for our buck, because we owe that to the public,” he said. “We’ll be making sure that we’re using those funds efficiently and getting, for example, the most units that we can.”
Gary Jones, the Government Affairs Director for the OKC Metro Association of Realtors spoke to the council at the January 14th meeting and applauded the HAIP after he and others from the Association of Realtors had been consulted for its creation.
“We appreciate the City bringing us to the table,” Jones said. “There are people like us that are ready to go and do the work. We just need you guys to let us get loose and get out there and make it happen.”
Prioritization
The next step for the City, then, is to define the new directorial position – what Butler said has so-far been internally referred to as “Housing Officer” – and to appoint someone to the role.
At that point, the HAIP will become something of a guidebook for how that new official will oversee and coordinate all aspects of the housing equation across OKC, with a focus on how best to allocate and manage what little housing-specific funding the City has at its disposal.
“We wanted this document to be as detailed as possible as a guide to the person that’ll be taking on this role,” Butler said, “because our funds are limited, so there’s just a really intense focus on prioritization.”
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.