Federal grant being sought to help address Tucson housing woes

The city and county are working together to seek a $7 million federal grant they say can boost the housing stock across the metro Tucson area and help bring home prices down.

“This HUD program is intended to address several things: outdated zoning and land-use policies, inefficient procedures, gaps in development resources, inadequate infrastructure, lack of neighborhood amenities and challenges in preserving affordable housing stock,” Manisha Bewtra, of the city’s housing department, said Friday at a public hearing about the grant.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s “Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing” grant program is “targeted at removing obstacles to the development and preservation of affordable housing,” according to a county news release.

The city-county proposal intends to address four areas: zoning and land use, inefficient procedures, gaps in resources and inadequate infrastructure, Bewtra said.

The federal program is looking for evidence communities are already making an effort to address their housing issues, she said. The city and county can point to recent efforts like making “casitas” easier for homeowners to add to their property and financial assistance it provides to some first-time home buyers, Bewtra said.

“We have also made a very strong case for our regional need, given dramatic increases in housing prices that have outpaced income growth,” Bewtra said, “this program is also looking for a strong collaboration.”

The city, the lead applicant for this joint venture, will have to submit its application for the federal funds by Tuesday.There is a five-year timeline attached to the grant funding, said Sarah Megginson, the city’s housing development manager.

The joint application draft cites the dire need for more affordable housing locally.

The cost of housing in the region has “exploded” since 2019, the city-county draft application states, which has, in turn, caused a “severe cost burden, overcrowded housing arrangements, and homelessness,” the application draft says.

Further, rent and housing prices have significantly outpaced income here, making home ownership unlikely for a growing number of residents and boosting the chance of eviction.

“Tucson and Pima County have high rates of poverty compared to peer cities and counties across the country, and research shows that children who grow up in Tucson and Pima County have less opportunity for economic mobility than many other places across the nation,” especially for children in low-income households and children of color, according to the draft application.

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A housing study completed in 2021 by the University of Arizona said the city and the county needed “housing affordability solutions” for over 75,000 households within the city limits alone.

Currently, half of all homeowners in the region and 65% of renters make less than $75,000 annually, with at least 30% of their income going toward housing.

The county’s poverty rate is 15%, the draft application says.

The average median income (AMI) for a four-person household in Tucson is $68,400, “nearly $33,000 lower” than the Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale metropolitan statistical area, the application notes.

The housing cost has burdened renters, too. In 2019, the “Fair Market Rent” for a two-bedroom apartment was $903 per month. To pay this rent without struggling financially, renters would have had to earn $36,150 annually, the application says.

Five years later, that same two-bedroom apartment costs $1,337 per month, a 48% percent increase, meaning that a household has to now earn “at least” $53,480 annually. However, “household incomes increased by just 22% during the same time period.”

And because rent has increased significantly, so have the number of evictions in the state: in 2021, 5,703 eviction filings occurred; last year, there were nearly 13,000 .

The draft application makes the case that increased costs have been a major driver in the rise of homelessness here. The number of people experiencing homelessness has increased by “a staggering” 59% between 2020 and now, and according to the most-recent regional survey.

About 80 percent of those surveyed said they were experiencing homelessness for the first time, the draft application states.

The federal grant would help the region to encourage the development and diversity of affordable housing in high-need areas, officials say.