Arizona's U.S. senators praise affordable housing efforts

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(The Center Square) – U.S. Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, both D-Arizona, are applauding efforts to increase affordable housing in the state.

Four Arizona NeighborWorks organizations have been awarded nearly $1.5 million in grants via the NeighborWorks Flexible Impact Grant program. Of that amount, Chicanos Por La Causa Inc. will get $502,000. Comite de Bien Estar Inc. will receive $381,000. The Primavera Foundation Inc. and Trellis will get $247,000 and $325,000, respectively.

In a press release, Gallego applauded these organizations for “working hard to make affordable housing a reality” for Arizonans.

“These grants will help them expand their services, reach more families and put more Arizonans into homes,” said Gallego.

Kelly agreed, adding that every person in Arizona needs a safe and affordable residence.

“These grants will support local organizations that are making real progress, whether it’s keeping rent affordable for families or helping them buy their first home,” said Kelly.

Affordable housing is a problem nationwide, but particularly in Arizona. For example, a 2025 study from the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center says there is a housing units shortage of 168,465 units in Arizona. The Arizona State Law Journal referred to the situation as a “housing crisis” in a March report. This is one of the reasons why Gallego is also pushing bills such as The Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream to Housing Act.

“I grew up not in a great housing situation,” said Gallego during a July hearing covered by The Center Square. “My first bed was my college dorm room bed in about eight years, and prior to leaving for college, I actually helped my mom get her first loan in quite a while, and it was an FHA (Federal Housing Administration loan.”

Will the NeighborWorks grants work? That depends, according to a think tank.

“While we don’t focus on federal policy, there has been a lot of investment at the state and federal level, and the holdup continues to be permitting at the local level,” Katie Ratlief, executive director of Common Sense Institute Arizona, told The Center Square in an email. “So it will be up to the cities whether or not this has the intended effect.”

In a July report, Arizona earned a “D” rating on CSI Arizona’s Housing Report Card for the first quarter of 2025. The average home price is $434,797.

“Historically, households in Arizona needed to work about 45 hours per month on average to afford their mortgage payment at current market wages, interest rates, and housing prices,” wrote CSI Arizona’s Zachary Milne. “At the prevailing hourly wage rate, today it takes over 65 hours of work to afford a monthly mortgage payment. Alternatively, to afford the average home, a household needs to earn $96,490 under conventional mortgage guidelines.”

In March, CSI’s Glenn Farley told The Center Square that the solution to Arizona’s problems was to permit more units, specifically the kinds of units that can be more affordable to first-time buyers.

“These are smaller units, multi-family units; smaller, single-family on smaller lots,” said Farley. “These are the kinds of properties that we need to get approved for construction and then construct them if we want to bring prices down.”