Our Why: Tulsa Chose Us, We Said Yes

In some ways, Tulsa, Oklahoma, resembles other mid-sized American cities, rich in history, shaped by resilience, and driven by ambitious growth plans.

What Tulsa lacks is sufficient affordable housing and the development infrastructure to build at the necessary scale. Our national housing crisis is reflected in their communities.

In Tulsa, the Housing Partnership Network (HPN) is working to bridge that gap through our Tulsa Housing Partnership initiative. At the invitation of local leaders and with support from philanthropy and the City of Tulsa, we are designing an affordable housing strategy that will expand the local development capacity and attract capital at scale to accelerate the production and preservation of affordable homes.

This initiative is a collaboration with the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation, CDFI Friendly Tulsa, and Housing Forward and aims to support the creation of up to 5,000 affordable housing units in the coming years, and—importantly—to strengthen local infrastructure for housing and community development that will pay dividends long into the future.

Last month, we named Anthony Scott to spearhead the Tulsa Housing Partnership. Anthony comes with deep experience in working with communities and localities to build and support their housing infrastructure, most recently as the CEO for the Durham Housing Authority. He will work closely with Kathy Laborde, an HPN board member and president of the Gulf Coast Housing Partnership (GCHP) in New Orleans, as the effort moves forward. HPN helped launch GCHP in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to fill a local void in affordable housing development, and now it is a strong, independent nonprofit that is rooted in and serves the community.

We are also readying a new housing investment fund that will help seed and finance both rental and ownership housing in Tulsa, as well as evaluating what kind of entity would best help expand (rather than duplicate) local development capacity.

The Tulsa Housing Partnership is built around four core pillars: capacity building to strengthen local organizations and leadership; capital deployment to bring critical financing tools and investment into the market; connection and collaboration to align local partners and national expertise; and reconciliation to acknowledge and address the historical injustices that have shaped housing access in Tulsa. These values guide every aspect of our work and reflect our commitment to building with communities, not just in them.

When people ask why HPN chose to focus on Tulsa, my heart goes first to North Tulsa -- home to the Greenwood District and the legacy of Black Wall Street. More than a century ago, Greenwood was a thriving community of Black-owned businesses, homes, and institutions until it was violently destroyed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Hundreds were killed, and 35 square blocks were burned to the ground. The city and country failed to rebuild what was lost.

That scar remains. And yet, so does the spirit of the community.

It was that history, and the promise of reconciliation, repair, and renewal, that first drew us to Tulsa. We saw a city reckoning with its past and ready to chart a more equitable future. We were moved by the urgency, the openness to new ideas, and the potential to make a generational impact.

At a practical level, Tulsa’s local leaders were already deeply engaged. They had begun conversations with more than 20 different CDFIs in search of a path forward. HPN was fortunate to be part of those early conversations and eventually invited to submit a housing action plan that became the Tulsa Housing Partnership.

Our network of more than 110 nonprofit housing organizations brings a depth of experience in place-based development, and we saw an opportunity to apply that learning in Tulsa while building something replicable for other cities facing similar histories and inequities.

While the Tulsa Housing Partnership effort will be citywide, we will devote attention to neighborhoods in North Tulsa, where disinvestment has followed a long history of disruption from the Tulsa Race Massacre to urban renewal and the construction of a highway that cut the community off from the rest of the city. These compounding events have left enduring wounds and limited access to safe, affordable housing for generations. While there is no way to rectify the violence of the past, we can certainly invest in a stronger, healthier future. We can help build a new legacy of opportunity in communities that have suffered immeasurable loss.

The efforts to build and bring development capacity and capital to Tulsa is even more important at a time when the country is facing an economic slowdown, because affordable housing development is a proven strategy for growth. If 5,000 units are developed in Tulsa in the coming years, those projects will create thousands of good jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity for the city. They could positively influence everything from community health and safety to educational outcomes and nearby small business growth.

Nothing about those outcomes is simple, of course, especially when federal programs that incentivize affordable housing are at risk of being cut. These projects require a range of programs and partners to succeed, including experienced developers, community-based organizations, private-sector investors, philanthropic supporters, and city agencies. When organizations lack experience, clarity, or understanding of what is required, it becomes more difficult to plan, finance, and build these projects.

That’s why HPN is in Tulsa. We understand the complicated capital needs of these developments. We understand the commitment required. And we recognize the importance of how and where these housing gaps emerged in the first place. Local leaders in Tulsa are taking on those challenges, and we are eager to help them move forward.