As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic
we still face multiple crises.
One of the most glaring is the housing crisis.
It doesn't just stop at our national borders.
It's global.
And as we see the rates of evictions and homelessness
increase, those numbers can overshadow the real human cost.
We're in clearly a housing explosion right now
in terms of rent increases.
And the sad reality is, is that
because the state legislature has a preemption in place,
there's virtually nothing
we can do at a local level to cap rents.
Our challenge right now is a supply and demand issue.
It's also the fact that we have virtually no local investors
who are putting money
into our housing stock and upgrading them.
These are all out of state people.
They're real estate investment trusts.
They're people who are just simply pooling money together
without any attachment to the local people.
They're putting a little bit of money into them,
jacking the rents up,
refinancing based on the new rents,
and taking that money that they get in the refi
and putting it into another another project.
And they're turning people out on the street at the same time.
Developing housing in Tucson is not easy.
Even with the federal programs like the Low Income Housing Tax
Credit Program,
the Tucson Housing and Community Development Department
lists a number of obstacles the city has come up against
in building new, affordable housing.
Some of those include supply chain issues, labor shortages,
zoning and competition for developers statewide.
It requires
not just the city to do these efforts,
but it really does take all the partners,
all the stakeholders to help us get there.
Without the development of new affordable housing.
We are left with apartment complexes
like the Monterey Garden Apartments
located in midtown Tucson.
And it's a microcosm of what's happening across the city.
Northstar Management and Consulting Inc.
had managed the apartments
for several years before buying the property
in December 2021, after which they began
terminating the leases of all 52 units.
Many of the tenants have lived there for years, are on
rental assistance, fixed income or have disabilities
and have nowhere to go despite looking for affordable housing.
Attempts were made to reach out to North Star for comment,
but they didn't respond.
They put a note on my door the day before Christmas Eve day
saying I had 60 days to get out of here, and I cried.
[packing dishes]
I'm very stressed out.
I might have to have surgery. I have to move.
I can't find a place.
I am lucky enough to have people who will help me.
I can stay with people,
but there's a lot of people here that don't have that
and what's going to happen to them?
There's just no place to find rent for my voucher.
My voucher is for $837.
You're wanting us to have three times our income.
well have half the people in here aren't going to have that.
And on the Pima County website, it shows all these apartments
and it says they accept Section Eight and the rent's
six something, but that's incorrect.
Like the websites need to be updated as well
because I've gone to a lot of places
just for them to say, Oh, we don't accept vouchers
at this time, or the new owners don't want Section Eight.
Cathy: it's almost $200 just to find out if I qualify.
And I'm scared and I'm mad
and I feel discriminated against.
Arizona Public Media reached out to several apartment listings
on Pima County's website that accepts rental assistance.
We spoke with seven managers
who said that they were at capacity
and on average had a waiting list of 3 to 5 years.
Why landlords don't work with us right now
is the market is very hot.
A lot of times
our tenants can't get into a unit
because the rent is higher than what our program allows.
And so we recently received a waiver from HUD to go higher,
we're at the maximum.
Some tenants are successful at finding
units, but most are struggling.
We've made significant changes in the past two
and a half years,
but a lot of landlords who stopped working with
our program are not aware of those changes.
But even the tenants at Monterey Garden Apartments
who are not reliant on rental assistance
are being pushed into housing insecurity
because the hikes in rent already
imposed are eating into their disposable incomes.
I was paying $928
and it went up to $1024.
Because they are adding in water.
You know, it's supposed to be all utilities paid.
The rent increase actually really impacted us.
I mean, yeah, it's only about 100 bucks, but it's 100 bucks.
There's not really
a whole lot of money to be getting them clothes
or going out and going to dinner or having fun
or anything like that because everything's
getting so expensive at this point.
So it's it's going to be hard for me to find a place
by the time they kick me out to.
If you look at reviews for North Star Properties online,
you'll find
consistent grievances left by tenants over the years.
People cite harassment and abusive behavior
from management
being cheated financially and multiple
complaints of apartments under code
with no attempts by management to make repairs.
Again, attempts were made to reach out
to North Star for comment, but they didn't respond.
There's safety hazards throughout this property
that have never been addressed but have been
brought to their attention.
I've been flooded out four times.
They don't compensate you for any of that kind of stuff.
My heat was out for a year.
My toilet's been broken for about two years now.
I actually had a storage unit from them, too.
They hit my credit with, you know, additional charges
when they weren't due kind of thing.
That's that's these people. That's who you're dealing with.
You know truth is, I'm going to wind up
living out of my car for a while.
I will.
I have to be out. Same time as her end of the month.
I haven't even started looking yet.
When we were at the Monterey Garden Apartments to conduct
interviews, we witnessed the eviction of Laura and Nick.
Laura: we can't have until tomorrow morning
or an hour, can we have an hour?
Constable: an hour for what?
Laura: until he comes home and get my cat.
I don't know what to do.
Laura and Nick had been living at the Monterey
Garden Apartments for over a year.
They shared a lease with Laura's
mother, who paid half the rent.
But she passed away in August 2021,
Not being able to pay the full amount.
They sought assistance from the
Tucson Eviction Prevention Program.
The program accepted their case and were ready to pay back rent
and three month's rent in advance.
Laura and Nick said
that North Star requested written verification of this
and would grant them more time before issuing an eviction.
But while they were getting it in writing from their case
manager, North Star proceeded with the eviction anyways.
So even having jumped through all those hoops,
they now have an eviction on their records
and will likely not be accepted into any housing
and face homelessness.
I'm just so focused right now
on trying to make it work and emailing these people.
and it's just so frustrating.
To have an eviction on your record
within the first two years they want, no place will take you.
No place.
There are people
that do have challenges in life that do throw curveballs
and they have no choice and end up in a predicament like this.
And I think that's more
than those that are scamming the system.
We're not computer literate.
So it takes
that even extra time for us to get all this figured out.
But nonetheless, we have done it.
Then they don't want it.
The United Nations states.
That forced evictions are a gross violation
of a range of internationally recognized human rights.
Broadly defined as the permanent
or temporary removal against the will of individuals
from the homes and lands that they occupy
without the provision of and access
to appropriate forms of legal or other protections.
Lots of landlords,
they are aware that the assistance is coming,
but it's often to their benefit to follow
through on the eviction, mainly because they know
they can increase the rent for the next tenants coming in.
For the sake of financial gain
In this market,
we're seeing a big displacement of families
that are at the lower
end of the income spectrum, and some of them do have
stable income,
but just not enough to pay
the rent that many of the landlords
are asking for right now.
The landlord tenant law
in Arizona heavily favors landlords.
One of the things that I saw
when I was a tenant attorney is
Landlord Attorneys come in with stacks of files
which each represent a human being and a family.
In a lot of cases,
the tenants don't show up either
because they don't comprehend the notice
and or they don't understand the law.
And if the tenants weren't there,
it was very much like an assembly line process.
That's what's happening to these people.
The landlords have the ability, usually financially,
to hire an attorney if they need to, to navigate this.
The tenants usually don't.
People need to be aware
of what their rights are under the Landlord Tenant Act.
The landlord tenant act needs to be amended
and also tenants need to be educated in
layman's terms about what the process is.
These are basic needs
that people need to be able to navigate a system
that is stacked against them and to be able
to prevent themselves from becoming homeless.
Speaker: You all know that
the development has been moving forward.
One way tenants are empowering themselves
is by joining organizations like the Tucson Tenants Union
who are fighting for housing justice.
The rapidly growing group heard about North Star's plans
and rallied together to help the tenants,
even corresponding with North Star
to see if the company would grant residents
more time to find secure housing.
It didn't bring any changes.
This should be a problem that we're all facing together
because if you're not
in the process right now of either being evicted
or your rent being increased.
You're going to be, you're going to be.
because if it's not happening to you,
it's happening to your Nana.
When you make it personal, and you say,
that person there, is my Mom,
my sister
This affects all of us together.
God bless you.
Right on!
[crowd cheering]
Again,
The Monterey Garden Apartments is just a microcosm.
Tenants all over the city
are being priced out of their homes
and the consequences are immense.
Studies show that the crisis will continue
to disproportionately affect the most economically vulnerable
and marginalized.
Women, children, and people of color.
Leading to greater inequality, gentrification, segregation.
and creating new forms of social conflict.