By Terrance Thornton | Digital Free Press
The affordable housing debate has come to Scottsdale City Hall.
In the evening hours of Monday, Nov. 14, Scottsdale City Council hosted an hour-long discussion and presentation regarding a comprehensive report provided by the Matrix Design Group meant to illustrate in reality the state of the municipal housing market.
“We were retained in December 2021 to conduct the analysis and our goal is to improve understanding of the distribution and categorization of the occupied housing stock,” said Christian Caron, senior research analyst at the Matrix Design Group.
Mr. Caron explained to City Council the primary source of data comes from the 2020 American Community Survey — a product of the United States census — comparing the city of Scottsdale to six similar communities in terms of affordability and housing. They were:
- Cherry Creek, Colorado
- Laguna Beach, California
- Pasadena, California
- Santa Fe, New Mexico
- Tempe, Arizona
- Walnut Creek, California
In addition to the ACS survey, Mr. Caron explains, his firm used Redfin and Housing and Urban Developmentdata but only one-year of COVID-era information was available at the time of the presentation.
“All of this data is 2020?” Scottsdale Councilwoman Betty Janik asked following the initial download at City Hall last night. “Because a lot has certainly shifted in the last two years. The data is nice, but it is dated.”
Mr. Caron offered the extensive housing analysis reveals price points of where housing surpluses and deficit exists relevant to different income subsets of the overall Scottsdale marketplace
“What we did was —- the core of the analysis —- we used ACS data on household income and housing units and a combination of HUD estimates for the median family income,” he explained. “We defined the differences between the supply-and-demand equation at various income tiers as a percentage of median family income. The purpose of this analysis is to reveal price points of where there exists surplus and deficits of housing.”
The analysis presented by Mr. Caron qualified each data point in housing, which are:
- Affordable
- Workforce
- Market Rate
- Luxury
