The Tulsa Housing Authority is making progress toward finishing a multi-year backlog of legally mandated audits, but the process is expected to run well into the term of newly elected Mayor Monroe Nichols. Under state law and an attorney general opinion, the audit delays could allow city leaders to overhaul the board that governs THA, which also faces a 12,000-person waiting list of applicants seeking housing assistance.
While the 2020 THA audit was finally completed this fall, the authority still needs to complete audits for 2021, 2022 and 2023. Under both federal and state laws, the authority is required to complete an annual audit. While the agency has cited software issues and the COVID-19 pandemic as delaying the years’ worth of audits, a publicly available document shows the new software was implemented before the pandemic in May 2019.
After Wednesday’s board meeting, THA President and CEO Aaron Darden said the 2021 audit should be completed in the first quarter of 2025, at which point the next audit will begin immediately. The 2021 audit will have taken THA around four months to complete once it is concluded, Darden said, and the lingering 2022 and 2023 audits are expected to take about the same amount of time. Following that timeline, THA would complete its audit backlog by around September or October 2025 at the earliest, with the 2024 audit still required.
“It could be sooner than that,” Darden said. “I would probably venture to say that it’s not going to be longer than that until we get all of those complete.”
The term of board member David Walker, appointed by former Mayor G.T. Bynum in October 2021, concludes Jan. 20. With Walker’s term ending, new Mayor Monroe Nichols will have the opportunity to seat his first THA board member, pending advice and consent of the Tulsa City Council. Walker is eligible to be reappointed, and he said he would like that.
“There’s been no communication (from Nichols’ office), but I am interested in being reappointed,” Walker said.
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During his campaign, Nichols promised to “achieve functional zero homelessness” by 2030 and increase access to affordable housing. While it remains to be seen how his administration will use existing federal, state and municipal laws to address Tulsa’s housing crisis, Nichols met with THA board members Tuesday to learn what the agency expects to add to the city’s housing inventory during his tenure, Darden said.
“I know he’s still fleshing out a lot of his housing initiatives, and so I anticipate that we’ll very much be a part of that conversation. I don’t think there’s anything that’s really concrete,” Darden said. “Our meeting was [about], ‘This is what we anticipate in, say, 2025 in terms of our development pipeline,’ so that he has that knowledge when he’s engaging his team and the others and trying to figure out, holistically, what’s the approach going to be when he really hits the ground running in 2025.”
The Tulsa Housing Authority has multiple ongoing projects aimed at providing affordable and low-income housing across the city to help Nichols work toward his goal. At Wednesday’s meeting, the five-member THA board approved an application to the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency seeking low-income housing tax credits for one ongoing development, The Hilltop.
Located next to THA headquarters on the site of the former Sunset Apartments overlooking downtown, The Hilltop project is proposed to include two phases:
- 107 low-income units with floorplans ranging from one to three bedrooms, with 20 of those units dedicated to a HOME-ARP program that provides additional case management supports; and
- 150 additional units that would not be tied to low-income housing tax credits.
Despite excitement about The Hilltop development, it remains unclear when ground will be broken, let alone when construction could be completed.
In April, the official “Tulsa housing strategy” estimated that the city faces a gap of 12,900 housing units to account for current need and growth within the next decade. The City of Tulsa permits an average of roughly 830 units a year, according to the city planning office, which must rise to 1,290 a year to meet estimated demand.
The Tulsa Housing Authority expects to bring 100 units online at the Phoenix at 36N project in 2025, but Darden said those are the only homes likely to be ready for residents within the year. Other projects that should break ground next calendar year will not be finalized until later.
“I think we’re at somewhere around 400 units that will be impacted (in 2025), whether it’s through rehabilitation or new construction,” Darden said. “We’re looking at about $125 million in dollar impact, potentially just for our 2025 initiatives. Now, obviously, that is starting construction. So when those units actually come online won’t be in 2025, but that work will be underway.”
THA board votes to sell property it just acquired
Located at the southeast corner of North Peoria Avenue and East 36th Street North, the Phoenix at 36N project is the first phase of the THA effort to build more than 500 housing units on the site of the former Comanche Park apartments, which were demolished last year.
Catty-corner to the Phoenix at 36N project, the Tulsa Housing Authority recently obtained a property containing a shuttered convenience store. A family with the surnames Chaudhary and Waheed deeded THA the 0.55-acre property at 3604 N. Peoria Ave. on Aug. 26 for “$10 and other good and valuable consideration in hand paid by” THA. (A document later released by THA revealed that the agency paid the family $200,000 as a purchase price for the property.)
Following a brief executive session Wednesday, the THA board voted to move forward with selling the property “for market value.” However, details of how the sale process will unfold were not initially clear.
Ginny Hensley, THA’s vice president for communications and public affairs, said she was unsure whether the property’s sale will involve soliciting bids or whether it will be a no-bid sale. She said she also did not know the financial details of how THA obtained the property.
“I confirmed with our team that we have interested buyers for the property that was voted on at our board meeting today and we will continue negotiations with those parties,” Hensley said.
The THA board had originally been scheduled to hold its final regular gathering of the year on Dec. 12, but that meeting was cancelled and rescheduled for Wednesday. (The November board meeting also was canceled.)
While the Dec. 12 agenda and cancellation notice were posted on the THA board webpage, the new agenda for Wednesday’s meeting was not. Instead, the agency complied with the Open Meeting Act by posting a paper copy of the agenda in a window at THA headquarters. Additionally, the agenda was uploaded to the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s website, although that does not constitute “public notice” under state law.
Wednesday’s agenda items calling for an executive session and “disposition” of the 3604 N. Peoria Ave. property had not been listed on the Dec. 12 agenda. The property had been purchased by its prior owners for $77,500 in January 2019.
Nichols appoints housing, homelessness advisers
While Nichols has yet to name potential candidates for the THA board seat he will appoint in 2025, he has begun appointing several key figures of his administration. According to the Tulsa World, Nichols is allowed to appoint up to 16 members of his staff. He has filled at least seven of those positions.
Two of Nichols’ staff appointments have been for housing-centric positions, with Gene Bulmash taking on the role of senior adviser on housing. Bulmash served as the housing preservation officer for Washington D.C., and he is married to Emily Kaiser, a daughter of Tulsa businessman and philanthropist George Kaiser. Emily Hall, a former chairwoman of Housing Solutions Tulsa and daughter of former Mayor Susan Savage, was named Nichols’ senior advisor on homelessness.
Former State Rep. Shane Stone, a Democrat from Oklahoma City, has returned to Oklahoma to join the Nichols administration after five years working in municipal government in Maricopa, Arizona. Stone, whose legislative tenure overlapped with Nichols from 2017 through 2019, is Tulsa’s new government affairs director. Also moving back to Tulsa is Muskogee City Manager Mike Miller, who was announced as the next city administrator.
Others appointed to one of Nichols’ 16 staff positions include:
- Laurel Roberts, a former Tulsa Police Department officer, who was appointed commissioner of public safety;
- Dana Walton, Nichols’ campaign manager, who was appointed deputy chief of staff; and
- Aron York, a Nichols campaign staffer and former secretary of the Tulsa County Democratic Party, who was appointed executive scheduler.
AG opinion appears to allow council to unseat housing board
While Nichols automatically gets to appoint at least one member of the Tulsa Housing Authority next year, an attorney general’s opinion could allow him to replace the whole board — if the City Council were to approve such a plan. While no city elected official has proposed a complete refresh of the board, state law appears to authorize the removal of board members — and potentially criminal charges — for the failure of a board to complete an annual audit.
In 1988, Rep. Gary Bastin, a Democrat from Del City, asked then-Attorney General Robert Henry if housing authorities in Oklahoma were required to submit an annual audit and what recourse a municipality had if their housing authority failed to provide an annual audit.
Henry, in a legally binding attorney general opinion, found that both state and federal law required the completion of an annual audit.
“Several possible courses of action are potentially available to a municipality depending on the facts and circumstances of each particular instance. One possible remedy to compel performance of the duty of filing an audit is a writ of mandamus. Title 12 O.S. 1451 (1981). Another possible means of recourse is the removal from office of the commissioners of the housing authority for neglect of duty pursuant to Title 63 O.S. 1060 (1981),” Henry concluded. “Additionally, Title 21 O.S. 580 and 21 O.S. 581 (1981) provide for the imposition of criminal penalties punishable as a misdemeanor when public officers willfully neglect or omit to perform duties enjoined by law.”
Based on the opinion, how to address the failure of a housing authority to comply with audit requirements appears to be up to the discretion of its city council. If the council were to attempt to remove any board members, the board members would be entitled to a hearing on their dismissal before their removal.
If Nichols and the Tulsa City Council chooses to let current board members finish their terms, then Rick Neal, Lisa Albers, Debra Morrow Ingram and Sheila Johnson-Brown would term out of their positions Jan. 20, 2026.
(Update: This article was updated at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 19, to include the $200,000 purchase price the Tulsa Housing Authority paid for the property at 3604 N. Peoria Ave.)
Read the new 2020 Tulsa Housing Authority audit
