The affordable housing market throughout Phoenix has had a serious issue with the lack of affordable homes. 

As a result of inflation and the pandemic, individuals have either lost their jobs and had to relocate or prices have gone too high for them to afford a home.

Experts across Arizona agree that the perfect storm has led to the affordable housing crisis, and there is no specific way to solve the problem — particularly for low- and middle-income families struggling to make ends meet.

In addition, even before current economic conditions took hold, the housing market was faced with a lack of readily available affordable homes for those interested in purchasing or renting.

Even communities in the far West and East Valleys are struggling to provide more affordable housing for residents.

“Diversity is out of balance” when it comes to affordable housing, said Adam Lane, neighborhood services supervisor in Surprise.

More diversity of incomes and ethnicities in a community can have beneficial results, such as more jobs being created which leads to more houses, he added. 

Lane said that Surprise not only consists of many multi-family units, but also has many undeveloped lots which could potentially be used for new homes to be built on.

According to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), an “affordable dwelling” is one that a household can obtain for 30% or less of its income. But this varies from city to city.

For example: a household is considered “low-income” if it makes less than 80% of the median income in the local area (this is called Area Median Income, or AMI). 

By this definition, a dwelling is considered “affordable” for low-income families if it costs less than 24% of the area median income. Households that exceed that amount toward housing expenses are considered to be cost-burdened. 

This does not include other expenses that people have such as gas, food, student loans, etc. This housing wage is more than low-income workers typically make.

The minimum wage in Arizona is $12.80, according to the Industrial Commission of Arizona. An individual who works 40 hours a week at a minimum-wage job would be considered cost-burdened because they have to spend most of their income on payments on their housing needs.

“The market is the worst I have ever seen it,” said Barbara Reed, a Realtor with Realty Executives for more than 37 years.

Reed said there are not enough developers building due to prices being so high, and the rapid increase in Phoenix’s population is making it hard for these developers to keep up.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Arizona Housing Coalition, the real estate market in Phoenix has roughly 47,620 affordable units available but 182,652 people are in desperate need of housing. That means there are only 26 available homes for every 100 households in need.

Another problem is that many families try to reduce their housing costs by moving further away from job centers. But this simply increases their transportation costs — so a simple “affordable housing” metric might not capture the whole story.

Research has shown that there are two basic types of policies that could make a difference in housing affordability: The government could directly give money or discounted housing to low-income families; or policymakers could increase the number of dwellings in a given metropolitan area. 

This could be done either by relaxing restrictions on the size of buildings that can be built, or by relaxing restrictions that mandate minimum sizes of individual dwelling units. Cities tend to have a number of zoning rules that artificially restrict the supply of housing.

Andy Sinclair, capacity development coordinator for the Department of Economic Security, said rent jumped 15% to 20% due to the shortage of housing.

The rise in population over the past year has been significantly high and will only continue to rise and the lack of affordable homes will make it hard for people to avoid homelessness, he said.

“If more homes are not built soon, Arizona will have a severe problem with the amount of people who are not able to find a home or rental unit,” Sinclair said.

Editor’s Note: James Downey is a student at the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.