Oklahoma City now has its first citywide housing strategy, a 10-year plan that puts more than $130 million in public money behind a goal of building about 4,600 homes a year and repairing or preserving another 1,000 (via KOCO). City planners walked the City Council through it on Nov. 10.
The money comes from pots the city already controls: MAPS 4, the housing share of the 2025 general obligation bond, and federal Community Development Block Grant and HOME dollars from HUD. The council presentation lists $50 million from the 2025 bond, $55.7 million from MAPS 4 and $30 million in affordable housing development program funds.
That's a lot of money, but it's small next to the gap the city describes. The presentation says Oklahoma City needs more than 11,000 new homes over the next decade, plus preservation or rehab work on 34,000 existing homes and apartments. Building and preserving those roughly 45,000 units would take about $1 billion, and the city's existing resources might cover up to 13% of it.
So the yearly targets lean heavily on private builders. The presentation splits the 4,600 new homes by household income: 800 units for households at or below 60% of area median income, 400 for those at 61% to 80%, 200 at 81% to 100%, and 3,200 at 101% to 120%. The two upper tiers are marked as private-sector work. The 1,000 preserved homes a year divide evenly, 500 single-family houses and 500 apartment units.
One wrinkle on the numbers: KOCO, the city's strategy web page and the council presentation all use 4,600 new homes a year, while the city's own news release on the presentation says 4,000.
Shannon Entz, the city's housing strategy implementation manager, told KOCO the biggest needs are one- and two-bedroom units, starter homes and accessory dwelling units, ideally close to transit and other public services. "Affordable housing does not mean cheap housing," Entz said.
The city's own figures show why starter homes are hard to pencil. It puts the average cost to build a single-family home at $200 per square foot and the average home sale at about $270,000. Under the city's affordability chart, a household earning the area median of $68,200 can afford a home of about $221,000, and one at 120% of median, $81,840, tops out around $268,000.
KOCO reported that $25 million will go toward redeveloping Will Rogers Courts, a public housing complex that's nearly 100 years old. The city and the Oklahoma City Housing Authority won a $25.1 million HUD Choice Neighborhoods grant in September. Fox 25 reported then that all 340 units in the 1930s complex are slated for demolition and replacement, with construction expected to start in late 2027 and the first residents moving into new units in mid-2029. Other partners have committed more than $227 million, according to that report.
The strategy also leans on rule changes. Oklahoma City adopted an ADU ordinance in May 2025, and the presentation lists a development code update, a library of pre-approved home plans through the Office of Sustainability and building code updates as work underway. It also counts 4,210 undeveloped residential lots inside the inner loop and downtown, about 40% of them publicly owned, and more than 144,000 homes older than 45 years.
The city's release didn't mention a council vote. It said the Planning Department will hold a forum in the coming months for developers, nonprofits, lenders and others who want to learn more, and progress updates will be posted at okc.gov/housing.
Why it matters for Contractors
Most of the money here goes to subsidized rental projects, which mostly means larger developers and tax-credit deals. But two parts of the plan matter for small shops.
The first is rehab. If the city hits its preservation target, that's 500 single-family homes a year getting repaired or preserved, plus a housing stock where more than 144,000 homes are over 45 years old. Remodelers and repair contractors who already work in older neighborhoods should watch how the city routes its HOME and CDBG repair money, which the presentation says will be focused mostly in its targeted neighborhood areas.
The second is small-scale new building. The 3,200 homes a year in the top income tier are expected to come from private builders, at price points the city's own chart caps around $268,000. Pre-approved plans, the ADU ordinance and publicly owned infill lots are the tools that could make that work for a builder doing a handful of houses a year. None of the details are out yet, so the developer forum the city has promised is worth getting on the list for.