To address the city’s housing shortage, Partner Tulsa is looking where larger cities have looked as well — at empty office space in downtown.
The city’s partner agency estimates 1,300 units could be created out of empty office space in downtown. This would satisfy roughly 10% of Housing Solution Tulsa’s 2023 estimate that the city needs roughly 13,000 units by 2033 to satisfy housing demand.
Partner Tulsa Director Kian Kamas said existing space for housing in downtown is likely a mix that hasn’t been put to use both before and after COVID-19.
Kamas says converting downtown office space makes a lot of sense to them.
"When it’s existing infrastructure, it’s existing buildings, so it’s cheaper and quicker to move those units into the pipeline," Kamas said.
Partner Tulsa's announcement to city council comes as other United States cities like San Francisco have considered converting office spaces to living quarters after COVID-19 drove many to remote work.
Some of the buildings Partner Tulsa is eyeing for living space include the Sinclair and ARCO buildings. Kamas said the city can give developers incentives.
When asked about the timeline for this initiative, Downtown Tulsa Partnership CEO Brian Kurtz said Partner Tulsa is currently assessing how to get more homes into downtown.
But even if the available space satisfies a significant portion of the city's housing need, it likely doesn't satisfy the demand for the area. According to Kurtz, the area needed 3,700-4,200 housing units at the start of 2023.
It also more easily satisfies the need for high-income housing in Tulsa, which the Housing Solutions study says the city does not need as badly. According to the study, Tulsa needs 6,250 housing units categorized from "low income" to "extremely low income" and 5,350 units categorized as "high income."
Kamas said getting more low-income housing in Tulsa — or any community, for that matter — requires time, money and effort that goes beyond site preparation and policy changes that create high-income housing.
"That's where it's easy to look at that and say, 'It's evenly split,' but the bottom half is far more complex to solve for. And in many communities, they don't solve for it because it's more complex, and you see that need grow," she said. "That's what we want to not do."
Tulsa voters in August approved $75 million for a first-ever housing incentive program in the city. The money will be spent from 2026-2030, according to a presentation given to city council Wednesday.
