Tim Steller's column: Legislature ignores housing crisis for culture-war bills

The Republican legislators didn’t conceal their skepticism about the bill floated by their colleague, Sen. Wendy Rogers.

The proposal, Senate Bill 1342, would prohibit the Chinese Communist Party or its members from owning real estate in Arizona. Nobody seemed convinced it addressed a real problem.

“I don’t honestly see the need for it in the state of Arizona,” said Sen. Tyler Pace, a Mesa Republican, during the Feb. 16 meeting of the Senate Commerce Committee. “I don’t know how to enforce it in the state of Arizona. Other than Sedona, I don’t know what they’d want to buy.”

Laughing, he added: “I’m curious to know where this is going to go, so I’ll vote aye (yes).”

Committee Chair Sen. J.D. Mesnard, a Chandler Republican, added that he doesn’t usually vote to pass an unripe idea out of committee, but he sealed the bill’s passage when he said, “Out of respect for Sen. Rogers, I wanted to advance the bill.”

Even in a time of a near-even partisan split in Arizona’s Legislature, it remains a hotbed of one-party rule. If you’re not a member of the slim Republican majority in the House or Senate, your proposals stand little chance of being considered at all, let alone passed, even if they deal with crucial state issues like the housing crisis.

But if you’re a Republican, low-priority ideas that touch on hot-button topics, like the Chinese Communist Party, often get a friendly committee hearing and passage to the next stage. For example, this session:

Rep. John Kaiser’s HB 2166 would remove the sales tax on guns in Arizona, something that Kaiser said would encourage gun ownership and send more business to stores instead of private sales.

A bill and resolution by Rep. Walt Blackman — HB 2624 and HCR 2028 — would put in the state constitution a requirement that cities spend more on law enforcement every year.

Rep. Quang Nguyen’s HB 2008 would require Arizona high schools to teach students about the evils of communism and totalitarianism and how they are opposed to American principles of liberty and democracy.

None of these bills, even though they’re of borderline importance, languished. Republican members passed them out of committee, or, in the case of Nguyen’s bill, out of the House itself. They may well become law.

Of course, in terms of political strategy, it’s not smart to get on the wrong side of a culture-war issue, or to cross a fellow Republican whose vote you might need on your own bill. Mesnard’s “Out of respect for Sen. Rogers” could be read as “So Sen. Rogers doesn’t vote against my bills.”

While acting fast on these and other bills dealing with emotional hot topics — abortion, “critical race theory,” transgender athletes in high schools — Arizona’s Legislature has barely touched one of the most pressing issues in the state: housing.

Among U.S. cities with the fastest rent increases between January 2021 and January 2022, six Arizona cities were in the top 16, according to a Jan. 26, 2022 report by Apartment List. They are Scottsdale, Mesa, Phoenix, Glendale, Chandler and Gilbert.

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Tucson didn’t rank among the worst markets for rising rent, and yet it had a staggering rent increase of 23% over that 12-month period, the report said.

The prices of homes for sale in the Tucson area are also surging beyond affordability. The median home price went up by 17% from January 2021 to January 2022, ending at $342,751.

That’s unimaginable for anyone who has lived here long, and unreachable for a typical family in an area where the median household income is about $56,000 per year.

For this city and state, this has become a housing crisis. But the Legislature prefers to focus on taking culture-war stands.

Many Democrats and some Republicans have made an effort to address this crisis. Democrats have introduced 35 bills dealing with housing in the two chambers this year, but only three have been heard at all in committees.

It’s extremely frustrating to Tucson Reps. Andrés Cano and Pamela Powers Hannley both Democrats. They’ve both introduced housing bills that went nowhere.

Powers Hannley said she’s introduced eight bills dealing with two aspects of housing: removing state preemptions from cities making their own decisions on housing policy, and keeping people in their homes.

One bill, HB 2446, would eliminate a state prohibition on cities establishing “inclusionary zoning,” by which cities require that in a given area, a certain portion of the homes in new developments must be affordable. Another, HB 2793, would prohibit landlords from raising rent by more than 10% in a given year unless their properties are substantially remodeled.

A Cano bill, HB 2457, would simply establish a study committee to study statewide issues of housing affordability and eviction prevention.

Of course these bills got nowhere.

The point isn’t that these are the best ideas for addressing Arizona’s housing crisis, or that Democrats have all the answers. Most likely, some of their ideas are good, and others aren’t.

The point is that their ideas for addressing one of the state’s most pressing problems can’t even get a hearing, unless they can find a Republican to make it their own.

Meanwhile, a despicable legislator like Wendy Rogers, who has repeatedly embraced white nationalism, receives respect and deference for her fever dreams about Chinese communists.