Housing crisis in Phoenix leads to record evictions

Evictions in Phoenix, Arizona, have increased drastically over the past months, with Maricopa County leading the country in filings.

It is a regional phenomenon, according to Princeton University's Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions across 34 cities. Most of the places where figures have gone up by two digits in the past five years are in the Sun Belt, where populations are increasing and rents rising.

Overall, officials, said evictions have increased by 21% in Maricopa County, where Arizona is located. About 3,000 take place every month, with residents shocked about the speed and magnitude of the increases.

"What's particularly dramatic about Phoenix is how expensive it is and how quickly it's changed," Glenn Farley of economic research firm Common Sense Institute, told AFP. "Five years ago, Phoenix still had a reputation as being relatively affordable; rent was low, housing costs were low. That has pretty much reversed more or less overnight."

Farley added that servicing a mortgage in the county in 2019 was possible for someone working 40 hours a week. Now, people need to work 70% more, 68 hours a week, to be able to do so.

While wages have gone up by more than 20%, inflation during the past years has absorbed that, or even more, "and housing costs (have risen) more than double that," said Farley when explaining the financial reasons behind the increase.

Other factors include Americans' moving patterns following the pandemic. With the surge of remote work, people left more expensive markets and many relocated to places like Arizona. In Phoenix, increased demand caused costs to shoot up and has left the city with a 65,000-home shortfall. "You got a surge in demand, a surge in population, a collapse in supply. The result was rapid price increases," said Farley.

Constable Lennie McCloskey, on her end, told the outlet she typically hands between 19 and 25 eviction notices a day. He said what he sees the most now are people who are not making ends meet and give landlords the chance to get a court-ordered eviction.

"I've seen guys that are working, trying to work two jobs to keep this going, or they have multiple families live in the house or the apartment... the wages don't compensate the rent," said McCloskey.