Goodyear has grown, and so has the rent

Housing costs in Goodyear climbed faster than the Valley average

By Madeline Ackley
Twitter: @Mkayackley

The last decade has brought tremendous growth to the city of Goodyear. In 10 short years, the population has increased by nearly 50% and the city has managed to shape itself into a hub for data centers, medical offices and manufacturing plants.  

But one thing that hasn’t grown in Goodyear is affordable housing. 

Housing is considered affordable by the federal government when it costs no more than 30% of income, and varies by market. 

In 2010, renters in Goodyear could easily find a unit between $500 and $1,000 a month. Today, finding a place to rent at that price point is nearly impossible, according to data presented to the Goodyear City Council on Monday.

Homebuyers are also hard pressed to find affordable options in Goodyear. A decade ago, the majority of housing stock in the city was under $200,000. Today, less than 10% of homes go for that price. 

Data shows that while affordable housing is in short supply Valleywide, the problem is especially pronounced in Goodyear, when compared to the rest of the Phoenix metro area.

That small stock of cheap housing in Goodyear shrank even more during the pandemic. 

COVID-19 has increased challenges for low-income renters and home buyers to find housing in the Valley, said Joanna Carr, research and policy director at the Arizona Housing Coaltion. 

One of the reasons is because the pandemic has allowed many employed in high-paying sectors to work remotely. Some have opted to move to areas with cheaper costs of living, like Maricopa County. 

“People are migrating from different states where housing is historically very unaffordable, like San Francisco or New York, and they're coming to the Valley,” Carr said. Census data shows that people from out of state are moving to the Valley in droves, a trend accelerated by the pandemic. 

The influx of wealthier people willing to pay higher rents means that landlords are charging more, according to Carr. 

“A once very affordable state is becoming unaffordable” to many Arizonans, she said.  

Investment activity also increased during the pandemic, and large firms were drawn to places like Arizona with business-friendly policies and low property tax rates. 

“What we're hearing is that investors are really taking advantage of the opportunities...that the pandemic has brought,” Carr said. 

Investors bought up not just single-family homes, but also multifamily properties, and “flipped” them for a profit, she said. 

That’s “all well and good for the investment market and for raising a profit,” Carr said. “But what that's doing is displacing whole communities.”

Investors raise the rents on renovated properties. Suddenly, low-income tenants, including seniors on fixed incomes, may find themselves priced out of their homes, with few options. 

Homelessness is worse without affordable housing, experts warn 

A low supply of affordable housing is a major contributing factor in the rising rates of homelessness, said Amy St. Peter from the Maricopa Association of Governments.

St. Peter provided grim statistics when she presented in front of the Goodyear City Council on Monday. Homelessness has increased every year in Maricopa County for the last four years, and cheap, workforce housing in Goodyear has dwindled, especially after 2015. 

Ten years ago, 90% of apartments for rent in the city of Goodyear were between $500 and $1,000 a month, and by 2015, about 70% of rental units remained at that price point.

But by 2020, those units were scarce, and fell even further in the first quarter of 2021. Today, it is nearly impossible to find a rental unit in Goodyear that is less than $1,000 a month, but the proportion of rental units that cost between $1,000 and $1,500 a month have skyrocketed. 

Units that cost more than $1,500 a month were virtually nonexistant in 2015, but are now approaching 50% of the rental market in Goodyear.

It’s difficult to tell exactly how many Goodyear residents are at risk of being priced out of the market. 

Nearly a quarter of Goodyear’s households are considered low-to-moderate income, or LMI, meaning they make less than 80% of the area median income, which is about 5,800 households, according to city data. 

City leaders are apparently aware that Goodyear is in need of greater affordable housing options. 

“Population and household growth projections indicate a need for approximately 1,200 additional housing units annually between 2020 and 2040,” according to a report submitted by the city to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in May. 

“Many of these units will need to address the housing needs of Goodyear’s growing workforce,” the report read. 

Goodyear has also joined other Valley cities to form a regional strategy on addressing homelessness, organized by the Maricopa Association of Governments, or MAG. 

MAG,  in partnership with local and tribal governments around the Valley, is currently developing an action plan which will be released sometime in October, according to St. Peter. 

Among the goals of the action plan is for cities to create more affordable housing options. 

There are a lot of things cities can do to increase their stock of affordable housing. 

The city of Goodyear has the power to create incentives for workforce housing projects to be developed in the city, and controls zoning and land-use regulations. For instance, over 40% of land in Goodyear is vacant, while 6.7% of Goodyear land is zoned residential. A tiny sliver of that land -- 0.2% -- is multifamily housing, according to city data. The city has the power to change that through rezoning. 

But Mayor Georgia Lord isn’t sure how increasing affordable housing in Goodyear will be received by residents.

"The comments I get from people about it (is) it brings bad people, it brings crime in,” Lord said at the Monday city council meeting, referring to affordable multifamily housing developments.

Cities often face barriers when taking steps to increase affordable housing, and these kinds of developments can be fraught in some communities. 

A workforce housing development planned in Surpise at Waddell Road and Cotton Lane was halted indefinitely following traffic concerns and a petition from residents. 

“I have a lot of questions...a lot of apprehension,” Lord said, adding that the community needs to be on board with any action taken by the city. 

“If we're going to do anything, it has to be a big PR program, where we explain to people why we're doing this,” she said. “We need a buy-in.”

Carr said that while the mayor’s comments were not surprising, she also said that city leaders are increasingly open to the idea of affordable housing, because it’s beginning to affect segments of society that haven’t been impacted previously; people like teachers and nurses, Carr said. 

“That voice is making the municipal leaders listen to the need for affordable housing,” she said.

Madeline Ackley can be reached at mackley@iniusa.org or found on Twitter @Mkayackley.