During Wednesday’s announcement of a new housing initiative aimed at drawing outside investors and incentivizing local builders to produce affordable homes in Tulsa, Historic Greenwood Main Street Program president Burlinda Radney offered a blunt assessment of 100 years of policies she said have led to vast homelessness and cost of living woes.
“What I really want to challenge this group and all of the supporters of this initiative to do is recognize that we didn’t do it right in the last century,” Radney said. “We’re not in this position because we did it right. We did a lot of things, but we didn’t do it right. Because if we had done it right, then we wouldn’t have people living under bridges. We wouldn’t have people who are barely able to keep their utilities on and so forth.”
Radney noted her observations are not exclusive to any one area of the city, as homelessness and housing affordability have become burdens for many Tulsans, regardless of geography. The Tulsa Housing Impact Fund, currently a $74 million pot of public and private dollars intended to “direct capital investment in affordable housing development,” becomes the newest program aimed at providing much-needed affordable shelter to Tulsa residents.
Managed on behalf of the city by the national Housing Partnership Network nonprofit, the fund is meant to facilitate investment into accessible housing development across Tulsa. It aims to do so by providing incentives and other administrative support to developers pursuing those projects. Inaugural donors include Tulsa’s philanthropic heavy hitters like the George Kaiser Family Foundation, Ruth Nelson Family Foundation and Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation, which have combined to give $27 million in funds so far.
The City of Tulsa has contributed $47 million in public monies to the new program through the Improve Our Tulsa 3 Housing Fund. The combined $74 million raised so far represents roughly 60 percent of the ultimate $120 million goal.
Robin Hughes, HPN’s president and CEO, said by connecting investors interested in Tulsa with the organization’s national resources and developing local government incentives — like friendly loan terms and tax credits for housing projects — the fund is positioned to help deliver on Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols’ promise to build 6,000 affordable housing units by 2028.
“The housing challenges in Tulsa are very complex, but we’ve seen how we can use local resources to leverage national resources in the initiatives that we’ve done in the Gulf Coast and in Detroit,” Hughes said.
HPN has found past success with similar ventures, Hughes said. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, HPN launched the Gulf Coast Housing Partnership in 2006, the project Hughes referenced during her speech. That effort has spurred roughly $670 million of investment in various Gulf Coast communities and the construction of 3,850 affordable homes, according to HPN’s website.
According to Hughes, the organization’s pipeline of loans identified for potential housing investors already exceeds $100 million. And although the fund has yet to reach its full $120 million goal, Hughes said the organization can already start distributing money. A website by which potential investors and developers can pitch projects to the Tulsa Housing Impact Fund is already active.
The board overseeing the new fund is “comprised of a majority of Tulsa-based members,” according to a Wednesday press release from HPN. Board members include:
- Bill Major, president of the Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation;
- Gina Stilp, executive director of the Ruth Nelson Family Foundation;
- Josh Miller, senior program officer for the George Kaiser Family Foundation;
- Burlinda Radney, president of the Historic Greenwood Main Street Program;
- Chuck Garrett, CEO of Cherokee Nation Businesses;
- Robin Hughes, president and CEO of HPN;
- Lawrence Hammond, director of the ACCESS initiative at the Community Preservation Corporation; and
- Andrea Osgood, executive vice president at Eden Housing.
HPN also intends to hire a board president and loan officer to help administer the Tulsa Housing Impact Fund, according to Katie Rodriguez, HPN’s executive vice president of capital markets.
Nichols: Friendly permitting, development incentives key in housing fight
Providing capital is only one part of the affordable housing puzzle, Nichols said during Wednesday’s press conference.
Echoing his remarks during his recent State of the City address, Nichols pointed to other measures like House Bill 2147, a law passed in May to let cities to speed up “cleaning titles” on blighted properties, allowing those assets to begin the process of reentering a city’s housing inventory more quickly.
“Once implemented, we’ll be able to do that in about six months,” Nichols said. “I want everybody to know, investors in this room to know, that those of us at the city are really focused on our internal processes, because we know it’s one thing to raise the money. We know it’s one thing to spend the money. It’s another thing to make sure we can deliver on our guarantee — to make sure everybody has a safe, affordable place to call home.”
Lengthy permitting processes can also stymie the construction of affordable housing, Nichols said, a red-tape issue he is hoping to untangle for developers proposing such projects in Tulsa.
“I think a lot of people are just concerned with the time (permitting takes),” Nichols told reporters after the event. “We have a housing acceleration team now (…). We’re taking a hard look at every process in development services, so where (do) we have challenges, how quickly do those get escalated, how good are we at communicating with everybody touching the project? Not just the contractor, not just the owner. Right now, I think we’re sitting at about five to seven days before a permit is first looked at and the comments are in.”
Nichols also touted a “community builder pilot program” the city has initiated. That program expedites “trusted builders” the City of Tulsa has previous experience with through the permitting process, another effort aimed at getting affordable housing units online as soon as possible.
Aaron Darden, the president and CEO of the Tulsa Housing Authority, told NonDoc that the new Tulsa Housing Impact Fund is an exciting opportunity to meet the need for affordable housing in Tulsa.
“We absolutely hope to be able to capitalize on those funds and leverage those in new deals and use that to build housing as well,” Darden said. “We’re super excited about HPN and the opportunity those funds are going to bring.”
At the Tulsa City Council’s Wednesday meeting, councilors voted unanimously to adopt an economic incentive policy for third-party projects supported through the Tulsa Housing Impact Fund. Proposed development incentives include eligibility for housing grants alongside “zero and low-interest subordinate loans” for developers, should they pursue affordable housing projects. District 5 Councilwoman Karen Gilbert told reporters at the morning press conference that the entirety of the funds HPN will oversee should be appropriated by “the end of the year.”
(Editor’s note: This article was update at 10:20 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, to change attribution of a quote to HPN President Robin Hughes.)
