Tulsa City Council Discusses Potential Zoning Changes After Housing Report

The Tulsa City Council held its first of three meetings on Wednesday on how the city plans to handle potential changes to zoning.

It comes after a report from the planning commission showed the city is split when it comes to the number of people who own their house or rent it.

The data also shows that 70 percent of Tulsa households have only one or two people living in them, and a Tulsa Housing Study says the city needs 13,000 more units over the next years to avoid a housing crisis.

"I'm surprised that 70 percent only have one or two people in their household," said Katie Knoten, Tulsa.

Katie Knoten is part of that statistic. She was renting her Midtown condo for six years before she bought it. Now people are coming to town and many of those moving to Tulsa are looking to rent, not buy.

"I think right now in Tulsa we're getting a lot of people that are coming here for business and tech reasons and I think a lot of those people, if it's not a long-term job, sometimes renting is the best option for that kind of community," said Knoten.

Ginny Hensley with the Housing Authority says renting is part of what she calls a new American dream.

"For this younger generation, it's living within your means, and having access to the things that you need, and also having access and excess funds to be able to do the things you want to do in your life and for a lot of people that equates to renting," Hensley said.

She says Tulsa needs more homes and apartments to avoid what's happening in places like Austin or Nashville.

"These larger cities grew really quickly and didn't have the housing stock to meet that demand and now are truly facing crisis levels of shortages," said Hensley.

The Housing Authority says Tulsa will be able to meet the demand for more places to live in 10 years, but it won't happen without help.

"It is absolutely going to take every sector of our city from private industry to the philanthropic community to government coming together to really rally around this issue," Hensley said.

The Tulsa City Council will have its second housing market meeting next week to talk about the housing environment, specifically regulatory structure.