Community Working to Solve Affordable Housing Emergency

Restaurateur John Conley, FUSD Superintendent Mike Penca and Housing Solutions of Northern Arizona CEO Devonna McLaughlin discussed Flagstaff affordable housing challenges on a panel moderated by FBN Editor Bonnie Stevens. Photo by Chad de Alva

Flagstaff Workers Struggle to Find a Way Home

Businesses, organizations, city, school district working toward collaborative solutions

By Bonnie Stevens, FBN

Clover Jacobs could hardly believe the news when she and her young family had been accepted for a Habitat for Humanity home. She didn’t think she was eligible but then she heard the home would be “a hand up, not a hand out,” and that Habitat looks to help people get to the next stage in life. Clover shared her story at the Coconino Center for the Arts during the “Arizona Storytellers Presents: Finding Home” event on Oct. 3, a public forum addressing affordable housing challenges in Flagstaff.

Clover, with her husband and friends, worked alongside volunteers to build the Flagstaff home. Before the drywall went up, the group wrote blessings on the wood studs. The home was small but it was their home – a safe place for their young son and a meaningful start for a young family that could then manage an affordable mortgage, pay the bills and even save a little for a down payment on a larger home.

CRISIS BECOMING AN EMERGENCY

Arizona communities are facing what’s being called a housing crisis. For Flagstaff, the challenge to find affordable housing has been with the community for decades. In recent years, with the steaming hot real estate market, the challenge has boiled over, creating a housing emergency impacting the ability for workers to live here, small businesses to keep their doors open, and the Flagstaff Unified School District to keep buses rolling.

The number of houses available for sale has grown recently, to about a three-month supply, but escalating home prices in recent years have hiked the average median home to nearly three quarters of a million dollars.

“As a Flagstaff native who grew up with loving parents making income at or just above the poverty line, the housing crisis and affordability issue hits home,” said Realtor Lori Anna Harrison with Zion Realty. “My grandfather, John D. Sutherland, built and developed Hidden Hollow Mobile Home Park. Back then, he provided affordable housing options for the resident workforce. As a local real estate agent, it is heartbreaking to work with clients who are prequalified to purchase but have no place to buy because these options at an entry level price point are out of reach, even in a dual income family.”

Ashlee Tziganuk, Ph.D., is a research analyst with the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University examining the issue of affordable housing. “Out of the six counties in the state we studied, Coconino County and Flagstaff have the highest percentages of cost-burdened renters,” she said during her Finding Home presentation, explaining that cost-burdened means paying more than 30% of a household income for mortgage or rent.

Housing Solutions CEO Devonna McLaughlin sees families struggling every day, living paycheck to paycheck and on the brink of homelessness. “When housing costs are 40% to 50% or more of a household’s income, any disruption to the balance can be catastrophic. If a family has a disruption to income – due to illness, accident, death in the family, etc., or unexpected expenses such as the car breaking down, a medical bill or something else outside their control, they struggle to make limited resources stretch even further. Many families who are paying too much for housing are one life event away from becoming homeless.”

Meanwhile, small businesses that have been creatively navigating the business landscape through the pandemic now feel the weight of yet another layer of adversity as hiring and retaining workers from an already shrinking workforce has become even more difficult, threatening their ability to stay open. “I’ve been trying to hire a manager for one of the restaurants for a salary of $70,000 a year. People can’t afford a place to live,” said restaurateur and chef