Critical mass: Arizona is now third-worst in the nation for affordable housing
Alden Woods
For a decade now, an affordable-housing shortage has devastated Arizona's poor and middle-class households. One advocate called it “the perfect storm.” Already it has led to rapid-fire evictions, a stalled social safety net and a spike in homelessness.
And it's getting worse.
Arizona’s rental-housing supply can now meet only a quarter of the state's need, according to an annual report released Thursday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The state now has just 25 affordable and available rental units for every 100 extremely low-income rental households.
That's a slight drop from last year, when Arizona had 26 units for every 100 poor rental households.
Nationwide, this year's number is 37 units.
The term “extremely low-income” applies to any household living below the poverty line or earning less than 30 percent of their area’s median income. That group includes mostly seniors, people with disabilities and the working poor.
Only two states — neighboring Nevada and California — have a greater shortage.
"I think it's hit critical mass," Arizona Housing Coalition executive director Joan Serviss said. "These are just the unintended consequences of not paying attention to decisions made when we were in crisis mode. And now, I think, we're headed toward another crisis."
READ MORE: Evictions spike as affordable housing options dwindle
In the decade since the Great Recession, Arizona's once-plentiful supply of cheap housing has dried up. Budget shortfalls forced the state to slash funding for rental assistance. Eviction- and homelessness-prevention programs shut down. Other programs built years-long wait lists, driven by a sudden, overwhelming demand.
Now the state's economy has mostly recovered. But its inventory of affordable housing keeps shrinking.
The crisis has coalesced around the state’s largest cities. Both Phoenix and Tucson now are among the nation’s most difficult metro areas in which to be poor and need a place to live: Tucson offers 24 units per 100 extremely low-income households. The Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area, as it’s called in the report, has just 21 units.
That makes Phoenix the 10th-tightest rental market in America.
Like most wide-scale problems, Arizona’s housing shortage has hit its poorest residents hardest. The report found that 78 percent of Arizona’s poorest households spend more than half their income on housing. That’s a state of living the NLIHC calls a “severe housing cost burden.”
The affordable-housing crisis has swept over every American community. But the shortage’s effects have particularly devastated the Southwest, where explosive population growth and rapid real-estate development have hollowed out the supply of cheap housing.
“Even where the supply is best, there’s still a significant shortage,” NLIHC research leader Andrew Aurand said in a press call. “And I’ll also mention that no major metropolitan area has an adequate supply, either.”
A map published inside the NLIHC’s report colors every state in shades of yellow, orange and red, depending on the severity of its shortage. In the map, most of middle America is shaded a golden yellow. The East Coast is something similar to burnt orange.
The entire West Coast is painted blood red.
Six of the nation’s eight worst states for poor renters are located west of the Rocky Mountains, according to the report. Nevada has the greatest shortage, at 19 rental homes per 100 households. California is second, with 22.
Arizona is third.
Local advocates sense an opportunity to stem the shortage's growth. They circled 2019 as a long-awaited chance to grab lawmakers' attention and reverse post-Recession funding cuts.
Lawmakers responded with a flurry of bills. This session, the Arizona Legislature has considered multiple bills that would create a state-funded eviction-prevention program, restore the state’s Housing Trust Fund and allow a separate fund to provide rental assistance for people with serious mental illness.
Reach reporter Alden Woods at awoods@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8829. Follow him on Twitter @ac_woods.
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