By Jessica Boehm | Axios
If you bought or sold a house in the past three years, you may have been asked to add a $25 donation to your closing costs to support affordable housing developments.
The Arizona Housing Fund (AHF) works with real estate agencies and title companies to ask home buyers and sellers to make a donation that flows directly from their escrow account into the fund for affordable housing.
All those donations have added up to more than $1.3 million from 4,100 individual donors and matches from agencies and developers.
Driving the news: AHF just awarded $850,000 to four projects that will bring about 200 additional housing units to the state.
Why it matters: Arizona is short about 270,000 housing units, which has spiked apartment and home prices and pushed out many middle- and low-income earners.
What they’re saying: “It’s really something that seems like the whole of our community really embraces. Everyone knows we have such a problem. Everyone wants to be part of a solution and we give people a way to do that,” fund founder Howard Epstein tells Axios Phoenix.
