Last Updated on July 23, 2022, 9:32 PM | Published: July 23, 2022
OKLAHOMA CITY (Free Press) — The litany of housing issues that we have examined in our multi-part series ranges from the dwindling number of local landlords accepting “vouchered” low-income tenants to the convoluted bureaucracy causing headaches and competition for the developers of low-income housing themselves.
Clearly, there is no one problem, but many that all have a large effect on people seeking affordable housing.
One state representative who wants to address the housing issue facing our state is Representative Mickey Dollens, HD-93 in southside OKC. He has received official approval for a day of interim study aimed at what he says is his top priority heading into the next legislative session: helping protect Oklahoma tenants from a predatory, corporate-controlled housing market.
“I decided to take this on first because of just a personal feeling or what is right and wrong,” Dollens said, “but also just from seeing how much Oklahomans support having a level playing field when it comes to homeownership.”
Two Studies
Though they are scheduled to take place on the same date, September 12th, the day will actually encompass two separate-but-connected study sessions, one focusing on the increasingly visible and problematic practice of out-of-state corporate landlords buying up housing in Oklahoma, and a separate study to discuss the need for stronger tenant protection laws.
Dollens has begun gathering a diverse committee of guests and speakers with the hope of finding actionable ideas that can lead to officially proposed legislation in the House’s next session.
“We’re going to discuss the issues at hand and what others states and municipalities have done to bring forth some solutions,” Dollens said. “There’s a group out of New York called Stop Corporate Landlords, and they’ve done a lot of research and have found some precedent in other states that people have tried. They’re going to be a part of the study.”
Additionally, Dollens is hoping to include Mike Means of the Oklahoma Home Builders Association, Will Roberts of the Oklahoma Association of Realtors, and representatives from the Oklahoma Policy Institute, but he also wants to hear from the landlords themselves.
Corporate Landlords and Management
As OKC has continued seeing major building and development, with sprawling new apartment complexes and single-family home neighborhoods springing up citywide, the creeping influence of corporate housing ownership is becoming unavoidable. In some cases, local developers are completing construction on new neighborhoods and selling directly to out-of-state corporate interests, bypassing any local presumptive homeowners entirely.
Dollens wants to hear from the people behind these practices as well.
“I also want to bring in some of these people that have been labeled as the culprit and hear their side,” he said. “I’m going to find the top five biggest corporate landlords in the United States and I’m going to send them a formal letter from my office inviting them to be a part of this study to share their side of the story.”
One of his chief interests in getting input directly from landlords in the study is the potentially large number of property management companies preying on out-of-state landlords that would otherwise not be connected to corporate or private equity interests.
“There are a lot of landlords who may not be as nefarious,” Dollens explained, “but if they’re not within visiting distance of Oklahoma, they will hire property management companies that are predatory in nature. They’re overcharging the landlord for services and parts, and as a result, in order to continue their business, the landlords have no other option than to raise rent to be able to pay the property management companies, which causes these steep increases and hikes that we’ve been noticing.”
Tenant Protections
In addition to exploring legislative options for regulating the way that out-of-state private equity interacts with our state’s housing market, Dollens also wants to discuss strengthening the ability of tenants to protect themselves against predatory and retaliatory landlords.
Under existing Oklahoma law, there are virtually no protections against landlords raising rent prices in clear retaliation for a tenant reporting unhealthy or unsafe conditions in a property to the Health Inspector or Code Enforcement.
It wasn’t until Governor Stitt signed HB 3409 into law in May of this year that a tenant could demand reimbursement for making necessary repairs to a property if the landlord had refused or ignored requests.
“Oklahoma is one of six states that doesn’t have anti-retaliation laws to protect tenants from vindictive landlords,” Dollens said in a press statement released to announce the interim studies. “Weak tenant protection laws attract out-of-state corporate investors looking to prey on vulnerable Oklahomans.”
Both of these studies examining the correlation between weak tenant protection laws and out-of-state corporate housing ownership will take place September 12th at the Oklahoma Capitol.
For more information, or to add your own experiences with corporate or retaliatory landlords to the conversation, you can reach Representative Dollens at [email protected], or on Twitter and Instagram with the handle @MickeyDollens.
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.
