Oklahoma City is among the fastest-growing cities in America, as the Greater OKC Chamber of Commerce and Mayor David Holt are quick to point out. But while that growth comes with the glory of NBA titles, Olympic events and increased national prestige, it also carries complications like strained infrastructure and rising housing costs that outpace wages.
The city’s latest attempts to address those particular problems are part of the 2025 Oklahoma City general obligation bond package that voters will decide Tuesday, Oct. 14.
Paid for by a 25-year extension of existing property taxes, the $2.7 billion package would authorize more than $1 billion for streets, hundreds of millions for parks and a substantial investment in improving the city’s affordable housing stock. One mill is the equivalent of $1 per $1,000 of property value, and OKC’s current property tax rate that would be extended is 16 mills.
OKC’s 2025 GO bond package is divided into 11 separate ballot propositions, each needing only a simple majority for approval. From largest to smallest, the project buckets would include:
- Streets, $1.35 billion;
- Park facilities, $414 million;
- Economic and community development projects, $175 million;
- Drainage control projects, $140.4 million;
- Transit and parking system projects, $129.6 million;
- Fire Department facilities, $130 million;
- Public safety projects, $107 million;
- Bridges, $90.6 million;
- Traffic signals, $81 million;
- Libraries, $52.4 million; and
- City maintenance, storage and data facilities, $47 million.
Sent to voters by a vote of the OKC CIty Council in July, the package was crafted with the help of residents through sessions held by the city last year.
The package’s $175 million economic and community development piece includes $50 million of support for affordable housing projects, which would become one of the city’s largest housing investments to date. And it comes at a good time, as OKC is facing a housing crunch.
Ward 2 Councilman James Cooper hears a lot about OKC’s housing crunch, which he has experienced himself.
“(In) Oklahoma City, America’s 20th largest city now, and America’s sixth fastest-growing city, an average one-bedroom apartment costs about $950 a month,” Cooper told an audience at a Sept. 23 forum on affordable housing. “So, if you’re a school teacher living in OKC right now — my former job as a middle school teacher — then you can afford a one-bedroom if you are a single person? That’s not including your utilities. That’s not including gas for your car. So, that’s the problem facing us. Once you identify the problem, then you can confront the solutions.”
OKC grew by about 20,000 households from 2010 to 2019, according to the city’s Housing Affordability Implementation Plan released earlier this year. The plan serves as a guide for what meeting the city’s housing needs could look like in the future. That growth accelerated in the three years after 2019, with another 27,000 households added between 2019 and 2022. The need for one- and two-bedroom homes is particularly acute.
There are about 19,400 OKC residents in need of homes that size, with only about 3,600 available, Cooper said in his remarks.
City of OKC housing implementation strategy manager Shannon Entz said future housing stock should meet the needs of those in the city more directly.
“We need to increase our inventory and the diversity of the types of rental units in Oklahoma City,” Entz said during a recent housing forum. “We need it all. We also want to preserve long-term affordability and habitability. Safe and affordable housing should be available to anyone. That doesn’t mean just building new housing — it means making sure it fills a need.”
Cooper said OKC’s shortage of housing also extends to larger homes in the city that are affordable. He said most of that construction has moved outside OKC limits to suburban and exurban areas.
“We also have a need for those three- to five-bedroom units, but unfortunately, we’ve built 21,000 of them not here in the urban core, but in the peripheral parts of the city,” Cooper said. “No offense to the exurban and suburban parts, but we have 7,000 people in need of that type of housing and have only built about 2,100, and many of those are not affordable.”
Incentives aim to boost housing stock
The portion of the GO bond devoted to affordable housing will be $50 million, if voters approve it. That money would be directed toward development incentives for affordable housing, preservation of existing affordable housing, policy and code updates — similar to the ADU ordinance recently approved by the OKC City Council — and infrastructure support.
“Infrastructure and preserving existing housing and development incentives are some of the most important aspects of what we need to do moving forward,” Entz said. “If you have a home in a block where houses are boarded up on either side of it and they remain vacant, that isn’t going to do much for the property value of that home. And if you have enough of those homes in an area, it doesn’t support commercial development either. Part of providing incentives is to help improve the housing in the area, and that also has an impact on development. That’s why, when we look at returns on these incentives, they are almost always quite a bit higher than what was initially invested through the incentives.”
Entz said land exists within the urban core that could be developed through incentives that might otherwise remain fallow.
“We might have something where a piece of land is good for housing, but it lacks basic infrastructure like waterlines, and those waterlines might cost $1 million to extend to the property,” she said. “Most developers aren’t going to want to take that on. But if you provide incentives, that can make it more attractive to develop a project in those areas.”
Ultimately, progress made through these GO bond investments will be measured years from now.
“I can’t wait to create the metrics and talk about engaging the successes,” Cooper said. “I just go back to Classen Boulevard. Anton Classen and John Shartel, years ago, had a vision. If there are mixed-use developments with ground-level retail and housing on those floors above it, if we start seeing more of that, while preserving our current housing and increasing infill development where baristas and teachers or servers — people who make up about 21 percent of the workforce — if we can get to a place where they can find affordable housing in the city, then I think we will have gone a long way in meeting the needs of our people.”
OKC Ward 7 Councilman Camal Pennington said the time to act is now.
“I’ll be watching this very closely, both as a councilman and as a member of the Housing Advisory Group, so I will have a front-row seat,” he said. “They just described that we are short 19,000 units or more. So we’ve got to work quickly. And in my area, northeast OKC in particular, there are a lot of opportunities for infill development that allows people in our community who are from our community to still be there. I want to turn some of our renters into homeowners, and I think that’s possible if we do it right.”
‘Enough lane miles to go from Oklahoma City to Anchorage’
While affordable housing initiatives may be seen as one of the more creative parts of the $2.7 billion GO bond package pitched to voters, its $50 million price tag is a drop in the bucket compared to what could be spent on the city’s streets and bridges if the proposals are approved.
Half of the package, $1.35 billion, would be set aside for street improvements in OKC through 382 individual projects. Those include 184 arterial (or non-residential) street resurfacing projects, 133 residential street resurfacing projects, and 27 widening projects. Another 25 sidewalk projects costing $35 million would round out the wish list.
“I think when you look at it, we have a lot of streets within our city limits, which stretch for more than 600 square miles,” Ward 4 Councilman Todd Stone said during an informational meeting on the GO Bond late last year. “We have a lot of areas that need attention. Streets that have fallen into disrepair need to be fixed. It’s one of the things I hear about most from residents, that our streets need to be in better shape than they are.”
Pennington said the need for street improvements is one reason why passing the latest GO Bond package matters in his eyes.
“I think that we’re going to put a big dent in the problems that we have if we pass it,” he said. “It’s a lot of money for streets. But our street dollars are so critical because, without it, the city’s funding is not sufficient to replace all of the roads that we have. Let’s remember, we are a city of 620 square miles. We maintain enough lane miles to go from Oklahoma City to Anchorage, Alaska. So in order to do that, we have to have an infusion of cash from this GO Bond. So that’s why it’s absolutely critical.”
Pennington said that while the bond package focuses on specific aspects of easing the growing pains of an expanding city, it would be an investment in the city’s long-term future and viability.
“People should get excited about the GO bond because it’s about core things that people need to have a thriving city,” he said. “It’s an investment in having great streets, having great sidewalks and having great parks. Also, it’s making cool investments for things like affordable housing. So it’s really a great way for people to improve their experience living in this city.”
Cooper is generally enthusiastic about the GO Bond, particularly the affordable housing component. But in his view, there needs to be more investment moving forward. He doesn’t see one 25-year bond package being a cure-all for OKC’s needs.
“I’m never going to be OK with or excited about parking garages, and we have proposed parking garages in there,” Cooper said. “Things like that aren’t exciting. I’m not excited to see street widening projects, which I don’t think fixes everything, but no amount of arguing with people about that can convince them that’s not going to be a solution to their problems.”
Although Cooper said he would have liked to have seen more money dedicated for the affordable housing incentives, he also sees potential for making that a reality in future bond issues through the MAPS sales tax program.
“My vision for MAPS 5 is to hit the gas pedal,” he said. “More investment in our core needs, investment in sidewalks and bike lanes and reliable transportation. Improvements to housing and parks. The things that we’ve set in motion from MAPS, Better Streets, Safer Cities, we didn’t do that by looking back. We didn’t get the Thunder by looking back. We need to keep moving forward.”
