City Lights Village facing pushback from neighborhood community

By Justin Ayer

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    TULSA, Oklahoma (KJRH) — A tiny homes community aimed at helping Tulsa’s homeless population find affordable housing is facing some opposition.

The City Lights tiny homes community City Lights Village is being built near 46th Street North and Peoria. Neighbors with the Chamberlain Area Neighbors Association tell 2 News Oklahoma they feel blindsided by City Lights and Tulsa elected officials for allowing the tiny home project to happen without them getting a say.

Jane Malone started Chamberlain Area Neighbors in her living room 30 years ago. About two miles from her home is where the City lights Foundation of Oklahoma plans to build 75 tiny homes for people coming out of homelessness. Malone feels her neighborhood didn’t have a say in what she refers to as an experiment by City Lights.

“All I know is that they don’t care,” Malone said. “They say they want to be neighbors, but that’s not being neighborly when they don’t want to meet.”

Tulsa Planning Commissioners voted to approve the site’s preliminary plat 5-1 on Wednesday.

Malone says she’s concerned about safety and property values. It’s why she hosted a neighborhood meeting on Feb. 11.

Malone showed 2 News an email from City Lights Executive Director Sarah Grounds saying her staff wouldn’t attend. Instead, Grounds invited them to come to the model home site on multiple dates and times to talk, and tour the property.

2 News called Grounds on Thursday, and she said City Lights staff went to nearby neighborhoods prior to green-lighting City Lights Village, but not to Chamberlain due to its distance from the property.

“We’ve met with probably hundreds of neighbors. This is the very beginning process,” Grounds said. “There’s plenty of time to build those relationships, and I feel confident City Lights will do what it has always done in all the neighborhoods that it’s been a part of.”

Some neighbors say 46th Street North and Peoria is not an adequate place for a tiny community mainly because there aren’t enough services nearby. Byron Watson joined Malone, and passionately pointed it out on Thursday.

“The hospitals, behavioral science facilities – everything that they need should be within walking distance as opposed to placing them in the back of the woods,” Watson said. “If we look at this plot of land where they want to place our brothers and sisters, it’s in the back of the woods. That’s not right.”

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