![]() ![]() Arizona's affordable housing efforts fall shortĮxperts agree: More needs to be done - and fast - to address the state’s rapidly growing affordable housing and homelessness crisis. The multi-pronged strategy includes increasing the supply of permanent supportive housing and emergency shelter space, providing more employment and education opportunities and expanding access to federal funding for Native American communities. On the same day HUD released its report, the Biden administration announced plans to reduce homelessness by 25% by 2025. This partially skewed Arizona’s population count, though most of the state’s homeless population was concentrated in Maricopa County, not Pima County. Experts agree that the numbers are likely a significant undercount because weather, volunteer availability and other factors can make it hard to get a complete count.Ĭleaning 'the Zone': Phoenix resumes cleanups of downtown homeless camp, gets people into shelterīecause Pima County used a different methodology in 2022 to count its homeless population, its numbers last year were inflated compared with other places. The HUD report's data was collected by local planning entities that count the number of people experiencing homelessness in their community on a single night every year. “And it’s the huge demands in our housing market that are contributing to homelessness.” “Essentially, housing and homelessness are connected,” Carr said. Joanna Carr, research and policy director for the Arizona Housing Coalition, agreed. But if we don’t have the units to actually house people, that money is basically worthless,” Simplot said. We could have all the vouchers we could possibly use. “We can have all the money we could possibly use. While the state has experienced immense population growth in the past two years, its housing supply hasn’t kept up. Of the more than 13,000 people experiencing homelessness in Arizona, most were unsheltered, meaning they were living on the street, in a car or in another place not meant for sleeping.Īrizona was one of just four states where more than two-thirds of unaccompanied youth under age 25 did not have a place to sleep.Īrizona is likely an outlier because of its dire shortage of affordable housing, said Tom Simplot, director of the Arizona Department of Housing. Yet Arizona saw a 23% jump in its homeless population. Homelessness across the country increased by less than 1% between 20, the report showed. While national numbers largely remained stagnant since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the data showed Arizona’s homelessness crisis worsened significantly. Department of Housing and Urban Development in December released its 2022 Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness Report, which includes key findings about homelessness nationwide and compares how cities and states measure against one another. View Gallery: Phoenix resumes cleanups of downtown homeless campĪrizona has one of the worst homelessness crises in the nation, according to new federal data. ![]()
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