Angela Moore will be 65 in August and as an early birthday gift, she said she is praying she’ll be approved for an apartment at the newly renovated The Harmony Marcus Garvin Apartments. The northeast Oklahoma City apartments are for seniors ages 65 and up, but Moore heard she could be approved early. She visited the campus recently and took a rental application.

She’ll pay more for rent than at her apartment on Britton Road and will have to contend with a flight of stairs to a second-floor unit.

Moore said she’d gladly make those sacrifices to live at The Harmony, with its freshly renovated interiors and enormous white-framed picture windows. In-unit washer/dryer sets are luxuries Moore said are worth the extra rent.

Marcus Garvey is an old schoolhouse that most recently served as a charter school. Developers redesigned the schoolhouse into 20 apartments and 20 duplexes, designated as affordable senior housing.

Oklahoma has many privately owned housing options for seniors, along with public housing and project-based housing complexes. But the over-60 demographic is growing faster than houses are being built in the state.

Nearly 900,000 Oklahomans are 60 and older, and another quarter million are approaching 60. During the past four years, the percentage of Oklahomans over 65 has grown by 43%; in 2034, the oldest age demographic will outpace the number of people under 18 for the first time.

As the number of older Oklahomans rises, many are packing up and moving. Retirement Living estimated that one in four seniors feels compelled to move due to rising rents, inability to pay rent, threat of eviction and landlords who won’t make necessary repairs.

— Moving Out

While Moore may move as a choice, Shanon Van Gordon, 72, was recently forced out of the townhome she rented in central Oklahoma City. She lived in the same complex as her sisters, who are her closest companions.

Oklahoma Watch reported in October on the lack of repairs and apparent retaliatory actions Van Gordon and her family experienced.

Securing a rental that met her needs meant Van Gordon had to move 12 miles from the home where she lived for 21 years to a food desert where the nearest grocery store is seven miles away. Plus, she pays $150 more per month for her new duplex.

Van Gordon’s sisters, also in their 70s, still live in the townhome complex, which is crumbling around them. With the landlord still slow to make necessary repairs, the sisters are saving for move-in deposits and other relocation costs in case they too are forced to move.

— Housing Desperately Needed

The state lacks affordable rental options for seniors who want to downsize and don’t need assisted care.

“About 40% of seniors are relying solely on Social Security for their income,” said Sabine Brown, a senior policy analyst at Oklahoma Policy Institute. “And rent has just greatly outpaced Social Security income.”

According to the Oklahoma 2025 Housing Needs Assessment, Oklahoma rent increased 31% between 2011 and 2021. During the same period, Social Security gave a 17.5% cost of living increase.

An estimated 68,000 senior-headed renter households in the state meet income requirements to receive Section 8 housing vouchers, Brown said, but because of crowded waiting lists, only about 25,000 vouchers are used by older Oklahoma households.

Legal Aid Services attorney Emily Dunn said she is seeing more seniors fighting for their homes at eviction court.

Older Oklahomans, she said, sometimes have trouble grasping that Oklahoma laws don’t provide them greater protections, particularly in housing concerns.

“I find not that they don’t understand what is happening as much, but that it can be harder to overcome thinking that there can be more done than can be,” Dunn said. “Laws, unfortunately, do not protect tenants in a way that we would like.”

Van Gordon had been fighting her landlord for years, lobbying him to repair the many problems in her townhome. After finally taking legal action, a judge ruled in her favor. Her landlord was required to pay her $1,000, a fraction of the nearly $4,000 Van Gordon and her son spent in actual moving costs.

— Outside the System

Similar factors that force some seniors to change their living arrangements may force others out of their homes altogether.

Janet Anders, 67, has been living in her car near the intersection of SW 33rd Street and Robinson Avenue for the past six months after being displaced when her sister was evicted.

Anders receives Social Security payments but said she can’t find an apartment that is affordable for her and she is not on the waiting list for Section 8 rental assistance, which closed in the fall.

Her boyfriend is in his 60s and the two said they know several other unhoused seniors. People age 50 and older are the fastest growing demographic experiencing homelessness. — Making Dents

Oklahoma needs tens of thousands of housing units the Housing Needs Assessment shows. To bridge the gap, particularly for older Oklahomans, Brown said state and local policymakers need to rethink zoning restrictions and find ways to encourage builders to accommodate accessibility needs for the fastest-growing age group.

Creative use of vacant buildings like The Harmony Marcus Garvey Apartments could represent a way to rejuvenate blighted areas while providing much-needed housing.

The Harmony is privately owned and built with a combination of tax increment financing, affordable housing GOLT bonds, HOME funds, and low-income housing tax credits. As such, the complex accepts Section 8 rental assistance, making the $1,007 rent for a two-bedroom unit more palatable for voucher holders.

In 2017, another school was renovated into low-income housing. The building that was Douglass High School from 1934 to 1954, then The Page Woodson School until 1994, is now The Douglass Apartments. Other schools and government buildings renovated into low-income and senior housing are sprinkled across the state. The same types of buildings are popular choices for market-rate apartments such as The Sieber in downtown Oklahoma City.

One development team is in the early stages of renovating the old Roosevelt School at 900 N Klein Ave. into The Theodore, a multi-use boutique hotel.

Creative use of old structures financed by gap funding sources may make a dent in the local housing landscape for older Oklahomans, but seniors are feeling the crunch, said Stacy Hanson, executive director of the Oklahoma Alliance on Aging.

The Alliance takes calls daily from seniors needing help with everything from food to housing assistance.

“We are hearing that there are high numbers of seniors reaching out for legal assistance to help them deal with evictions,” Hanson said. “I think people have just been suffering along, you know, paying for rent and food, really doing what they can.”

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Hanson said she’s seen Oklahoma’s senior population struggling with rising rents and stagnating Social Security payments.

“It feels like it’s been a slow, slow tsunami,” Hanson said.

She said older Oklahomans should reach out to their lawmakers and push for attention to their needs, like more housing options.

Oklahoma Alliance on Aging advocates for senior causes at the annual Senior Day at the Capitol, set for March 3.