What’s Working: In Phoenix, Mayors Kick Off National Housing Tour at New Affordable Housing Complex
“Affordability — especially when it comes to housing — is a more significant challenge than ever,” said Phoenix (AZ) Mayor Kate Gallego at her recent state of the city address.
And on Tuesday, she, along with fellow mayors, showed what a solution can look like.
Mayor Gallego welcomed the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) to Phoenix this week, where Columbus (OH) Mayor Andrew Ginther, president of USCM, joined Mesa (AZ) Mayor John Giles, and Tempe (AZ) Mayor Corey Woods to kick off a national three-city tour to highlight local solutions to America’s affordable housing crisis. The four mayors visited the Reserve at Thunderbird, a new complex providing affordable housing for 108 families who were previously homeless. The project, which features homes with three and four bedrooms, received federal, state and city funding.
“Access to affordable housing is consistently the number one challenge that mayors cite when we ask them what they’re facing in their cities,” said Mayor Ginther during a press conference in Phoenix.
The United States faces an unprecedented housing crisis driven by a lack of affordable units. The country is short an estimated 4 to 7 million homes, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. As a result, many U.S. renters now pay more than 30% of their income on rent, the highest cost-burden level in at least 20 years. In fact, no state in the U.S. has an adequate supply of affordable housing for the lowest income renters.
For homebuyers, the problem is the worst it’s been in half a century. In 2022, for example, a single-family home in the U.S. cost 5.6 times more than the median household income in the U.S., “higher than at any point on record dating back to the early 1970s,” wrote the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
“In the city of Tempe alone, we estimate there will be an additional 72,000 people by the year 2050, so we can’t stand pat with the housing stock we have now,” said Mayor Woods at Tuesday’s event. “We have to create new housing stock in all the categories–rental, homeownership, affordable, workforce and market rate–to really ensure that anyone who wants to live or work here has the opportunity to do so.”
At the event, mayors discussed local solutions. They touted modernizations to zoning codes, which Mayor Ginther saw as vital. “Codes are critically important to the future of our cities, and quite honestly, until we take the lead there, the federal government is going to be resistant to invest the way we need them to.”
However, mayors warned that state legislatures, through preemption of local laws, are standing in the way of action. “For example, we passed an ordinance for backyard ‘casitas,’ also known as accessory dwelling units. Ours was more focused on housing than the state,” said Mayor Gallego. “We said they have to be used for long-term residency. The state then preempted us and said it could also be party houses or short-term rentals.”
And so, at the press conference on Tuesday, mayors echoed their calls for historic federal action. “The reality is mayors and cities can’t do this on their own. We need a comprehensive approach across all levels of government,” said Mayor Ginther.
It’s a case Mayor Gallego has been promoting too.
“Now more than ever, we need partners across all levels of government, industry, and community organizations to come to the table on solutions to the affordable housing challenge,” she recently said. “We must do the right thing by our neighbors and friends who are struggling to find housing options they can afford.”
“The good news is that we know how to solve this problem. It’s a partnership of local government, federal government and private industry to create something that people would be very proud to live in and that’s affordable and attainable for the vast majority of folks in our communities,” said Mayor Giles at Tuesday’s event.
All the mayors agreed: More is needed from the federal government, including an increase in low-income tax credits, housing vouchers for rental assistance and HOME block grant funding as well direct flexible funding to cities. The challenge is national, and the solutions must be too.
As Mayor Gallego said at the event, “I think what you see here today is if the federal government steps up, we can do even more.”