Following several delays, the OKC City Council is soon expected to consider changing city ordinance to grant property owners in certain neighborhoods an inherent right to build accessory dwelling units beside their existing homes, with the long-term aim of getting more affordable housing into the marketplace.
The road to making such a chance has been long. While a first draft of the proposed ordinance was released in April 2024, the council postponed its planned vote last month to study the issue further. That vote could come this month or next, however.
Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, are homes that can be built on property already occupied by a home. ADUs may be connected to the main home, even in spaces such as converted garages, or be freestanding elsewhere on the property.
“It’s just what it sounds like: a small secondary living unit allowed in a residential area so that it could be a separate building,” Lisa Chronister, assistant director of the Oklahoma City Planning Department, said during a recent town hall. “That means facilities to bathe, for sanitation, places to sleep and cook. So that’s what differentiates a dwelling from, say, your backyard garden shed. It’s a place designed and built for people to live completely. So accessory dwellings can help with housing needs in Oklahoma City.”
In January, the OKC City Council approved the city’s latest Housing Affordability Implementation Plan.
The primary goals of the plan include:
- Increase the inventory and diversity of affordable rental units;
- Preserve the long-term affordability and habitability of new and existing housing;
- Increase housing and shelter-supportive services;
- Support opportunities to obtain and sustain affordable homeownership; and
- Refine development incentives and expand funding sources and partnerships.
As OKC and the rest of the nation facing a growing housing crisis, ADUs are one tactic to add relatively inexpensive homes to the city’s housing stock. Currently, however, they are not inherently permitted on OKC lots where a home already exists. Instead, homeowners must begin with the OKC Planning Commission and ultimately receive City Council approval to build an ADU — a process that offers neighbors and others the opportunity to oppose development. As proposed, changing the ordinance would allow for ADU construction in OKC’s “urban medium” and “urban high” land use typology areas.
“That’s one reason we are proposing ADUs,” Chronister told attendees of the online Zoom-based town hall. “Home sale prices and rental rates have increased dramatically in the past five years. There are 77,000 cost-burdened households in Oklahoma City. Cost burden means that a household is spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. Both owners and renters are cost-burdened. The lower your income, the greater your cost burden is. Cost burdens are a direct result of low income and a shortage of affordable housing and rental homes.”
Changing the OKC ordinance would help grease the wheels of infill development by easing the permitting process for building an ADU.
“The 2025 Housing Affordability Implementation Plan also cited making regulatory improvements that would facilitate the creation of more housing,” Chronister said. “Allowing more flexible zoning regulations can help the private market to work more quickly to respond to housing demand, removing regulatory barriers to development. In short, flexible zoning speeds up the response to housing demand. Multiple local and national studies and our own research include recommendations for zoning reform to address housing needs. Four zoning code-related strategies were overwhelmingly consistent across all studies, (including to) allow for more than one dwelling on a lot (and) allow for smaller homes.”
Oklahoma City and the surrounding metro have seen housing prices increase substantially over the past decade. Currently, the city’s average home costs about $250,000, depending upon location. Some neighborhoods, like Mesta Park, are populated by much more expensive homes. But officials say the city currently lacks an adequate supply of smaller dwellings.
“One and two-person families are increasing at higher rates than the construction of one to two-bedroom [homes],” Chronister said. “Zoning could allow greater density, especially near jobs, schools and transit. Also, providing more flexible zoning could reduce and streamline permitting costs and timelines.”
How other cities do ADUs
Even if the council ultimately approves the ordinance revision, OKC has been a bit late in its support of adding ADUs. Last year, the Norman City Council voted unanimously to allow accessory dwelling units in the city. Norman officials had been discussing allowing ADUs for at least two decades. Now, Norman ADUs can be up to 650 square feet and are not allowed to be taller than the primary structure on the property.
ADUs in Norman are allowed on lots that are part of general agricultural districts, rural agricultural districts, residential estate dwelling districts, single-family dwelling districts and single-family attached dwelling districts.
Strong Towns, a nonprofit that studies development and makes suggestions to municipalities based on their findings, conducted the study that ultimately led to the Norman City Council vote. Incoming Norman Mayor Stephen Holman told The Norman Transcript last year that ADUs are an effective tool to build housing supplies, but not a cure-all.
“It won’t solve our housing affordability issue in Norman, but it will help a lot,” Holman — then Ward 7’s councilmember — said at the time. “It’s something Strong Towns has identified as a low-impact, but very impactful, way to address housing issues and provide alternative options to just continuing to build further and further out on the edge (of the city).”
In Edmond, where many ideas about increasing housing stock have proven controversial, ADUs are allowed, provided they are of a certain size and go through all of the regular permitting processes that apply to new homes.
In 2023, Edmond considered creating an urban residential overlay district that would streamline the process of building ADUs in town. The change would have still permitted homeowner associations to maintain their own rules against building ADUs, but it would not have prevented ADUs from being built in the overlay district. In the end, the Edmond City Council tabled the idea indefinitely.
Tulsa allows ADUs, but they can be no larger than 10 percent of the lot size, with a cap of 1,000 square feet. The 1,000-square-foot limit is also being considered in the proposal before the OKC City Council. Tulsa also requires that the design of ADUs be similar to the main structure on the lot.
Cooper: ADUs are not the only problem or solution
OKC Ward 2 Councilman James Cooper has long championed the idea of beefing up housing in the city’s urban core through infill, and he views ADUs as a part of that strategy. While he supports the ordinance change, Cooper said it will not really address some of the root causes of OKC housing cost increases.
Cooper said outside interests buying up homes has become one of the city’s biggest impediments to fostering an environment where affordable housing construction can thrive.
“About 29 percent of the homes in the city being purchased by investment groups. I think we’re No. 3 in the country for that, and that is a huge issue that faces us right now,” Cooper said. “We also have a lot of big entities coming into our neighborhoods that are purchasing single-family homes in rehab condition and just demolishing them with no notification. And when they demolish them, they are frequently building out-of-scale homes that are out of design harmony with the neighborhood. I think that is unforgivable.”
Cooper, a career educator, said he often looks at the cost of housing through the lens of someone in that field making around $40,000 a year. A long-time rule of thumb is that housing costs should not exceed 30 percent of a buyer or renter’s income. For someone making a $40,000 salary, that equates to about $975 to $1,000 a month. With the average purchase price for a home in the city reaching about $250,000 — and with average rent above $1,000 per month — many have been squeezed trying to keep a roof over their heads.
“My question has always been, where is a teacher supposed to live right now?” Cooper said. “If they teach at Cleveland or Bell Isle, where are they supposed to live? We have about 21 percent of our workforce making $27,000 a year. Where are those people supposed to live? Where is a host at a restaurant or a barista living? How are they getting to work, and what is the cost of gas and maintenance and all that? ADUs are one way to solve that, but I don’t see them as a panacea for all of our housing problems. They are an important tool. But not the only tool that we need.”
To help spur construction of single-family homes that are in the price range of those who need them most, Cooper said a revolving loan fund of at least $50 million to $100 million is needed. That concept has been floated during conversations about OKC’s upcoming general obligation bond package.
“At bare minimum $50 million — and I’ve seen some cities go to $100 million — so that we can incentivize developers to do infill development, particularly along the [Bus Rapid Transit] route. We should be doing transit-oriented development which is an industry best practice,” Cooper said. “We can be doing that along Classen (Boulevard), and shame on us if we don’t. People should be able to walk out the door onto their sidewalk and get to a transit station to get to work or to school, and that is the goal. We can do infill development on these vacant lots instead of letting giants come in and buy them.”
Cooper said people also need to be educated on the process of homebuilding.
“I don’t think many people know how expensive it is to go to the Planning Commission and hire a lawyer and make your case. It’s an expensive process put onto a process that is already expensive. You’ve got land costs, which can be $150,000, and then the structure can cost another $150,000. That’s how you get to a home that’s $250,000 or more,” Cooper said. “Ask a teacher how hard it would be to go through the SPUD process if they wanted to develop an ADU on an existing property, or build a new home. It doesn’t make a lick of sense. And we still have hyperinflation with some building materials.”
Still, Cooper said ADUs are not practical housing options for every family.
“I think for single people or a couple, they make a lot of sense,” Cooper said. “But for larger families with multiple kids, they probably aren’t as useful. I think what they are is — again — not a panacea or a magic elixir, but something like a tool that can be used to help people find affordable homes in some situations.”
Hinkle: OKC ADUs need to be a ‘city-wide thing’
Ward 5 Councilman Matt Hinkle said he has heard plenty from the public about OKC ADUs, with most of the feedback — about 25 or 30 calls and emails — coming from people opposed to the idea of loosening restrictions on what can be built in their neighborhoods.
Despite that, Hinkle has consistently supported the concept since he first ran for Ward 5 in 2023. But while he supports the idea of streamlining the process for OKC ADUs, he said he doesn’t completely agree with all aspects of what is being proposed.
For starters, Hinkle said the wording of the ordinance change as currently suggested — primarily defined in the standards on Pages 15-17 of the proposal as revised in December — would give prospective builders much more leeway to build something out of line with the overall feel of a neighborhood or development. He expressed concern with the idea of property owners having a “right” to build ADUs.
“I think that opens up a can of worms down the road,” Hinkle said. “Some developer will buy 12 lots and build 24 duplexes side by side, and it just changes the character of the whole neighborhood ‘by right.’”
Further, Hinkle objected to only allowing ADUs in certain parts of the city — defined as the “urban medium/high” zones of the city.
“I don’t like the pretend boundaries of the urban core and just outside that,” Hinkle said. “I think as far as where they can go, it should be a city-wide thing.”
Hinkle said he has been working with the OKC Planning Commission to streamline the SPUD process to something he calls “SPUD Lite.” SPUD is an acronym for Simplified Planned Unit Development, which refers to a special zoning district category required for rezoning applications within the city’s boundaries.
“You would pay a $200 fee and turn in all your site plans and master design statement, and it gets noticed and then put on the agenda for a Planning Commission meeting. If there’s no protest, then it would be passed on a consent docket. But if you’ve got a bunch of neighbors objecting to the idea, then it would turn into a full-blown SPUD. They would have to re-up and pay a fee and fight the neighbors to get it done, but if it didn’t happen, people wouldn’t be out as much as far as the cost of going through the process.”
Ward 7 candidates open to OKC ADUs
In a March 11 debate hosted by NonDoc and News 9, OKC City Council Ward 7 candidates Camal Pennington and John Pettis, Jr. touched on the housing needs in the northeast OKC ward, and elsewhere in the city. Pennington said he supports streamlining the process for constructing ADUs.
“As a planning commissioner, I’ve been working on an ordinance so that we can build accessory dwelling units without having to go through all the red tape and approvals from City Hall so that people can turn their garage apartments and their accessory dwellings into homes so that people can use them. It’s so important that we have housing policy, and it’s so important that we use the bond projects as an opportunity to invest in creating more housing and incentivizing more housing.”
Pettis said that while ADUs can help solve some problems, there needs to be transparency in the process when they are approved by the city.
“When we talk about housing, when we talk about infill housing and so forth like that, we have got to make sure that we work with the neighbors so those individuals don’t wake up at five o’clock in the morning to see a development right next to them,” Pettis said. “We have to make sure they are at the table, not after the fact, but in the beginning stages.”
