The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer. Flagg is a candidate for South Tucson City Council:
“Rental prices up 57% from 2021,” was the headline in Sunday’s Star. The article then said that this was a cause for concern among tenants, which may be the understatement of the year. Tenants are terrified.
Can you imagine the stress and anxiety that comes with worrying about how a 57% rent increase might force you and your family to be evicted?
The 57% increase screams out for the need for rent control. Roughly half of city of Tucson households are renters. In the city of South Tucson, even more are renters. Both are notoriously low-wage cities, and their wages are not going up. Meanwhile, all other living expenses, including gasoline and food prices, keep increasing.
This housing crisis has combined with gentrification to wreak havoc on housing affordability and all the human suffering that goes with it. Lower-income communities get hurt first and worst. Huge rent increases have led to many more people living undignified lives on the streets of Tucson and South Tucson.
There is an urgent need for some form of rent control even though the state government has prohibited local jurisdictions from implementing rent control. Also needed is a massive outlay of public funds to create and preserve the housing units needed to adequately address this extreme crisis. The problem with developers, with a few exceptions, such as the David Wohl projects and Maryann Beerling with Compass Affordable Housing, is that they build houses to make maximum profit, so they do not build truly affordable housing. They make more money developing luxury housing and market-rate housing. The issue of developers not building affordable units because they face pushback from residents opposed to density, congestion and noise is more of a collective excuse for allowing this massive social problem to exist.
Many people say that gentrification is inevitable and that these nearly impossible to pay rent hikes are the product of free market forces.
This is not true.
Gentrification, which has morphed into the housing crisis, happens because developers are supported and enabled by layers of decisions and votes by elected officials and bureaucrats in local jurisdictions. The situation is neither inevitable nor hopeless because we the people can vote these officials in or out of office.
That is why after 39 years of living and working at the Casa Maria Catholic Worker Soup Kitchen, I am running on a slate, with Roxanna Valenzuela and Cesar Aguirre, for the South Tucson City Council.
In the 1.2-square-mile city of South Tucson, we have our own City Council, courts, zoning laws, and police and fire. The challenge is how to use these unique opportunities in a creative way to defend our city, aka Barrio Libre, from monied interests poised to displace current residents and transform South Tucson into something that looks more like downtown Tucson than South Tucson.
