Once affordable, Phoenix rents among fastest rising in US

Advocates say more initiatives needed to create affordable housing

gains for home prices among 20 markets nationwide, followed by the Las Vegas area with 4.7% and Charlotte, North Carolina, with 4.6%.

Evictions are also up, with courts issuing nearly 44,000 eviction judgments last year, slightly more than 2017, an Arizona Republic study found.

Carisa McAuliffe, her boyfriend and her two sons were evicted in September from a two-bedroom Phoenix apartment less than a month after withholding their $1,400 rent to protest problems like bed bugs.

McAuliffe, 37, said in her native California, tenants sometimes don’t pay to persuade landlords to fix problems. She didn’t know Arizona landlords can quickly evict tenants who withhold rent for any reason.

McAuliffe left her computer security job to sort things out. She and her boyfriend, who buys and sells cars, are staying with friends while the boys, ages 2 and 5, live with their grandmother.

Phoenix, like many other places, faces a shortage of affordable housing going back a decade to the Great Recession. Overall, the city’s housing supply is at about 4.7% – the national average, according to REIS.

Thomas Egan, president and CEO of the Phoenix housing nonprofit FSL, said the state needs about 165,000 affordable units costing renters less than 30 percent of their income. Just 2,000 units were built this year, he said.

Nationally, housing inventory has been tight since the recession, said Andrew Aurand of the Low Income Housing Coalition. He said there are fewer units available in coastal cities and metro areas with fast-rising rents like Phoenix, where people can spend more than a third or even half their earnings on housing.

Phoenix nonprofit development organizations like Chicanos Por la Causa pick up some slack, managing about 2,300 affordable and market rate units.

Native American Connections just opened a 64-unit development downtown where income, unit size and number of occupants are used to calculate rents ranging from a $440 studio for a lower-earning person to a $940 three-bedroom apartment for a family earning slightly more, CEO Diana Yazzie Devine said.

“It’s no secret that Phoenix is facing an affordable housing crisis,” US Rep Ruben Gallego posted on Facebook.

The Arizona Democrat said the new building ensures that individuals and families who work and attend school downtown can afford to live there, too.

Scott VanSoest, who manages a complex for the Foundation for Senior Living, which helps provide affordable housing for older people, said Phoenix used to be affordable “but now rents are out of control.”

Linda Stanley pays $236 of her $820 monthly disability check to live there.

“If I didn’t qualify to live here by being disabled, I’d be homeless now,” she said. (AP)