Arizona is going through a dramatic housing crisis with 3,000 evictions a month

With bulletproof vest and gun on his belt, Lennie McCloskey opens his folder and reviews the court orders: one, two… eleven evictions to execute. “It’s a lazy day,” comments the sheriff of Maricopa County, in Arizona.

With rental prices skyrocketing after the Covid-19 pandemic and a real estate market that does not meet demand in the southern state of the United States, there is no shortage of work for officers like McCloskey.

“Normally, I carry out between 19 and 25 evictions per day,” said McCloskey, one of 26 sheriffs in Maricopa County, which with 4.5 million residents is Arizona’s most populous.

The monthly average is 3,000 evictions in this county, where the city of Phoenix is ​​located, one of the fastest growing in the United States and a place considered key to the electoral dispute between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the November presidential elections. Rising prices, falling purchasing power and increasing population combine to create an overwhelming situation.

“What’s particularly dramatic about Phoenix is ​​how expensive it has become, and how quickly it has happened,” said Glenn Farley, director of the Common Sense Institute for economic research.

To pay a mortgage in the Phoenix metropolitan area you need to work about 68 hours a week, Farley explains, up from 40 hours in 2019. “It is an increase of more than fifty%”, underlines.

“I can not pay”

In 19 years executing eviction orders, McCloskey has seen almost it all: houses turned into drug warehouses, people subletting to others or leaving minors alone to avoid being evicted, baseball players abandoning all their belongings in the place.

But what he has found the most in recent years are people who cannot pay a month’s rent, sufficient reason to enter with an eviction order.

“I have seen people who work, who to try to support themselves have two jobs, or several families who share the same apartment…the salaries do not match the rent”describes McCloskey, 68 years old.

Farley puts numbers on that perception. “Salaries have increased a lot, between twenty% and 30%. The problem is that inflation alone has absorbed that increase and housing costs increased between 40 and 60%”.

Alex, a mechanic in his thirties whom McCloskey had to evict due to a two-month late payment of rent, suffers firsthand.

“I have two jobs and it’s not enough,” he tells AFP as he moves his things out of the two-bedroom house where he lived with his wife, daughter and dog Chester.

“I have worked all my life and I can’t pay the rent,” he says, bewildered, while two men changed the locks of the house.. “I don’t know how other people do it, but like I said, I’ve worked my whole life and it’s never been this bad. I am ashamed”.

“Endless problem”

Arizona is in the crosshairs of Biden and Trump in their race for the White House. The Democratic president won by about 10,000 votes in 2020 in this state, which with a strong Republican presence promises to be the scene of a political battle.

Issues such as abortion and migration impact the population, as well as the economic situation.

“We have the highest housing costs in the history of the state. “The rent has moderated a little, but it is still historically very high, and the third piece is the homeless crisis,” Farley summarized.

The economist believes that the increase in the number of people living on the streets, which number in the thousands in Phoenix, is not an exclusive consequence of the real estate situation and requires multidisciplinary solutions.

But it is undeniable that there is a housing crisis, caused in part by the displacement during the pandemic of thousands of people from states with a higher cost of living, such as neighboring California, who were looking for more space at a lower price.

But the paralysis of activities at that time affected construction, a sector that currently has a deficit of about 65,000 units, according to the economist’s estimates.

“You have a rise in demand, an increase in population and a collapse in supply. The result was this rapid increase in prices.”Explain.

The local legal framework governing the real estate sector, as well as rising commodity prices, Farley adds, have slowed the construction of affordable housing.

The paradox, he maintains, is that the state needs to attract migrants to boost its economic growth, something he sees as unviable as Phoenix loses its reputation as an economic destination. “It becomes more difficult for people”says McCloskey. “It seems like a never-ending problem.”

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