By Catherine Reagor | Arizona Republic (Image by Pexels)
Arizona’s affordable housing crunch was heading toward a crisis before the pandemic.
Pandemic-related job losses over the past year have made the situation worse. And while the almost half a billion dollars of rental aid from the late December stimulus will hopefully help many, those funds won’t fix the problem.
Arizona, and particularly metro Phoenix, has a shortage of affordable housing. Rising home prices and rents, coupled with lagging salary increases, have created a gap.