The availability of affordable housing is a major issue for many communities in the U.S. right now, but for one city in Arizona, it’s directly tied to the community’s sense of self.
Mayor Corey D. Woods of Tempe, Arizona, believes that having affordable housing options is essential to promoting diversity in a city.
“If you want to keep that diversity of all kinds, you have to make sure that you have housing for all people of all backgrounds, incomes and occupations,” said Woods.
To ensure that a diverse mix of housing is available for its even more diverse residents, the City of Tempe has developed a program to preserve and expand more housing opportunities for future generations.
“Hometown for All” is an initiative that accelerates the growth and expansion of affordable housing through a sustainable funding stream funded by city investment and donations from developers.
Irma Hollamby Cain, executive director of the Tempe Coalition for Affordable Housing (TCAH), is in charge of the initiative.
“We manage a portfolio of more than 70 affordable homes, condos and apartments that are available to income-qualified households,” said Cain. “As the owner of these properties, TCAH is able to keep them permanently affordable for Tempe residents.”
Through the program, vacant lands are purchased for future development, such as a parcel on Apache Boulevard that is intended to be transformed into 40-50 affordable rentals.
Introduced in January 2021, the program was designed to increase a sufficient amount of housing supply available for the diverse group of residents in Tempe, as well as future residents.
“I don’t want to be one of these mayors that goes out here and talks about affordable housing but doesn’t have any kind of program or revenue source to make it happen,” said Mayor Woods.
Woods collaborated with the housing team and spent weeks deliberating and planning the program with a sustainable revenue stream that is intended to allow them to create the housing that the people of Tempe need.
“We envision a world where every person has a safe and secure place to call home, allowing them to thrive in their life and community,” said Cain. “The rising cost of housing is making it harder for people to find stable housing and be secure in their communities and many residents, especially those with lower incomes, are forced to spend an unsustainable amount of their income on housing.”
Arizona Homeowners Coalition
Affordable housing is also a priority for organizations like the Arizona Homeowners Coalition, whose primary objective is protecting and acknowledging homeowners’ rights.
Dennis Legere founded the coalition in 2016 after he was invited to participate in a summer-long session discussing homeowners associations’ laws and problems, and he realized that nobody was advocating for the homeowners.
“You had professional lobbyists from the community managers, lawyers, builders and realtors, but nobody spoke for the homeowners and the residents of these communities with the legislature,” said Legere.
Due to this realization, Legere organized a coalition designed to be a lobbyist for the homeowners. Legere and his team propose legislation to the legislators on an annual basis and advocate for homeowners during that process.
“I travel around the state to meet with communities to talk to them about what they are facing and then try to help them understand what the law is, what their rights are, and what their obligations are,” said Legere.
Legere believes that affordable housing is important, but is limited due to the lack of supply.
“Supply and demand is very much evident in housing, less housing availability causes higher cost,” said Legere. “And we are getting a lot of influx of people from outside of the state into Arizona so we have a lot of demand for housing but a small inventory.”
Affordability challenges
Woods also believes that the lack of housing supply within Tempe makes it more difficult to create accessible, affordable housing for residents.
“Sometimes the challenge is, when land values are high, it means it could be harder to create housing affordability, because you’re buying high and now I gotta get my investment back somehow,” said Woods.
Woods also explained that some of the laws that exist to help create affordable housing in other states do not yet exist in Arizona. One example is inclusionary zoning – a policy that requires or encourages developers to set aside a fraction of newly constructed housing units to be affordable to lower-income households. Another is Tax Increment Financing, which captures the increase in property taxes (and sometimes other taxes) that results from new development, then diverts that revenue to subsidize that development.
“Sometimes we lack the tools we need that would actually allow us to create more affordable housing a lot more quickly,” said Woods.
What the city is doing
Since Arizona does not have access to the same tools as other states, Woods and his team look for other ways to provide affordable housing. This has included acquiring their own property in the city of Tempe. In December 2021, the City of Tempe purchased a piece of property for about $10.7 million for a project called Apache Central. The project was created after a grocery store in the area went out of business and residents of the neighborhood contacted Woods and his team to acquire the space.
Woods explained that this type of project was unprecedented in Arizona, but they wanted to benefit the community.
“The thought process was that this is going to end up being a luxury housing development that does not serve the needs of this broader community,” said Woods. “That was the only full-service grocery store in that section of town.”
This brought the concern of a possible food desert with no possibility of bringing back a grocer to the area.
To prevent these potential outcomes from occurring, the city bought the property and decided to redevelop the space to bring affordable housing and the grocer back to the location as well.
Last November, there was also a bond election where Tempe voters passed a $32 million bond proposal for the city. For the next four years, $8 million will be used to create more affordable housing in Tempe.
“That was voter-approved, so not only is that something that we as the council wanted to do but it was something that was overwhelmingly supported by our residents,” said Woods.
The problem with housing supply not only impacts the state of Arizona but the whole nation as well, and Woods believes that finding ways to create the supply of housing needed could significantly solve that problem.
“I think the ability to have more housing available in all different categories will also help to either stabilize or further drive some of the housing market price down so more people have the ability to access the housing that they need,” said Woods.