Phoenix Makes Progress in Affordable Housing, Helping the Homeless, and Sustainability

“Climate action is not only a public health and environmental imperative—it is central to ensuring equity and accessibility, modernizing our economy, fostering new jobs and talent in response to emerging markets, and ensuring Phoenix remains competitive. Companies in Phoenix are establishing climate goals and developing the technologies that will power a low-carbon, zero waste economy. We are poised to drive the development of solutions that will support the global paradigm shift to a more sustainable world.”

Over the last several months, the Blog for Arizona has reported how the City of Phoenix has made progress in some of these areas including:

• Committing to zero net emissions by 2050.
• The plan to install electric vehicle charging stations across the city.
• Permits for greater use of solar permits.
• The drive to purchase electric buses.
• A planting trees initiative.
• The construction or refitting of housing locations for homeless veterans.
• The formation of a young student leader group specializing in sustainability.

At the request of the Blog for Arizona, the Mayor’s office has provided a summary on the progress made in the areas of climate change-sustainability, affordable housing, and homelessness.

Please review the current results below.

CLIMATE

• With the creation of the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation in October 2021, Phoenix became the first city in the world with a publicly funded, municipal government office focusing on heat.
• Phoenix has invested $600 million in climate actions in recent years, including:
• • $30 million in LED Streetlight project replacing 100,000 streetlights
  • $15 million in a state-of-the-art compost facility
  • $25 million in a biogas facility
  • $30 million in retrofits underway to reduce energy use in City buildings
  • $530 million dollars in transit since 2016 under the Phoenix Transportation Plan (T2050) for extended bus and paratransit operating hours, and increased local bus frequency to every 30 minutes or less citywide
  • 45 miles of cool pavement installed—more than any other city in the world
• The city has planted 9,709 trees on city property in the last four years, which accounts for approximately 10% of the total tree inventory.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

• Operate 1,567 public housing units
• Administer more than 7,000 Housing Choice Vouchers
• Provide 1,200 housing units to seniors.
• Approximately 1,500 new Section 8 admissions were leased up into the program between January 2020 and December 2021.
  • Approximately 159 new landlords leasing a Section 8 unit for the first time

• Housing Phoenix Plan:
  • Adopted in 2020
  • Goal of creating or preserving 50,000 homes by 2030.
  • Through December 2021, 23,090 units have been created or preserved.
• New affordable housing creation: $5.8 million
  • Develop 126 new affordable single-family detached homes for low- and moderate-income homebuyers in South Phoenix Village (SPV).

• Landlord incentive program: $500,000 in incentives to landlords for accepting vouchers, with another $1 million in the pipeline.
  • 570 landlords have received incentive payments for executing 1,297 Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) contracts.
    • One-time payments of $500 to landlords for each new HAP contract signed
    • On Feb 16, 2022, City Council approved increasing the incentive payments to $2,000.
• HOME investment Partnership Program:
  • Successful in delivering approximately 6,300 affordable housing units, with 1,200 underway

HOMELESSNESS

• The City of Phoenix is working to address homelessness around the Human Services Campus as well as throughout the entire city.
• This fiscal year, the City has dedicated nearly $50 million for homelessness solutions to provide shelters, rapid rehousing, outreach and mental health services
  • Various community organizations partner with the city to provide services
• Shelters: $27.9 million.
  • A Sprung Structure is currently being constructed on the Human Services Campus (HSC) which will add 100 new beds and additional restrooms.
  • 175 new beds at Central Arizona Shelter Services(CASS)
  • Emergency crisis shelter for families at Chicanos Por La Causa
  • Veterans shelter with 145 rooms
  • Emergency shelter for vulnerable seniors
  • COVID-19 emergency shelters

This is a great start and more is yet to come as the sun rises on a Twenty First Century Phoenix.