The skyrocketing price of rents, home purchases and the high cost of living due to the historic inflation caused by Joe Biden’s government has generated another sensitive and serious problem: non-payment of housing and evictions.
Now there is no shortage of work for officers like McCloskey in a real estate market in full crisis and the impossibility of an average worker being able to purchase a home and cover the cost of a mortgage, insurance, taxes and all other expenses with their income. of everyday life
“I typically do 19 to 25 evictions a day,” said McCloskey, one of 26 sheriffs in Maricopa County, which with 4.5 million people is Arizona’s most populous.
The monthly average is 3,000 evictions in this county where the city of Phoenix is located, one of the fastest growing in the United States and a place considered key to the electoral dispute between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the November presidential elections.
The huge rise in prices, the collapse of purchasing power and the increase in population combine to create an extremely dramatic situation.
“What’s particularly dramatic about Phoenix is how expensive it has become, and how quickly it has happened,” said Glenn Farley, director of the Common Sense Institute, an economic research firm.
To pay a mortgage in the Phoenix metropolitan area you need to work about 68 hours a weekexplains Farley, compared to 40 hours in 2019. “It is an increase of more than 50%,” he emphasizes.
“I can not pay”
In 19 years executing eviction orders, McCloskey has seen almost everything: houses turned into drug warehouses, people subletting to others or leaving minors alone to avoid being evicted, baseball players abandoning all their belongings in the place.
But what he finds most in recent years is people who can’t pay a month’s rentsufficient reason to enter with an eviction order.
“I have seen people who work, who To try to support themselves, they have two jobs, or several families that share the same apartment. … salaries do not match the rent,” describes McCloskey, 68.
Farley puts numbers on that perception. “Salaries have increased a lot, between 20% and 30%. The problem is that inflation alone has absorbed that increase y Housing costs increased between 40 and 60%“.
Alex, a mechanic in his thirties whom McCloskey had to evict due to a two-month late payment of rent, suffers firsthand.
“I have two jobs and it’s not enough,” he says as he moves his things out of the two-bedroom house where he lived with his wife, daughter and dog Chester.
“I’ve worked all my life and I can’t pay the rent,” he says, bewildered, while two men changed the locks of the house. “I don’t know how other people do it, but like I said, I’ve worked my whole life and I’ve never been as bad as I am now. I feel ashamed.”
Serious problem with no immediate end
Arizona is in the crosshairs of Biden and Trump in the race for the White House. The Democratic President he allegedly won by about 10,000 votes in 2020 in this state, which with a strong Republican presence promises to be the scene of a political battle.
Issues such as immigration and the economic situation created by the Biden administration impact the population in all corners of the country. Nothing is cheap anywhere anymore, as a consequence of the disastrous policies of the current administration in the White House. That some people do not want to recognize it is another story.
“We have the highest housing costs in the history of the state. Rent has moderated a little, but it is still historically very highand the third piece is the homeless crisis“Farley summarized.
The economist believes that the increase in the number of people living on the streetswhat They are counted in thousands not phoenix It is not an exclusive consequence of the real estate situation and requires multidisciplinary solutions.
But it is undeniable that there is a housing crisiscaused in part by the displacement during the pandemic of thousands of people from states with a higher cost of living, high taxes and disastrous economic measures, such as neighboring California, who were looking for more space at a lower price.
Inflation and immigration chaos
Inflation and immigration chaos with the entry of millions of people into the country have increased the cost of living in general.
The high prices of construction materials together with the collapse in home sales in the US for two years has had an extreme impact on the construction sector, which currently has a deficit of about 65,000 units, according to economist estimates.
“You have a rise in demand, population increase and a collapse in supply. The result was this rapid price increase“, Explain.
The local legal framework that governs the real estate sector as well as the significant rise in raw material pricesFarley adds, have slowed the construction of affordable housing.
The paradox, he maintains, is that the state needs to attract migrants to boost its economic growth, something that he sees as unviable as Phoenix loses its reputation as a budget destination.
“It makes it harder for people,” McCloskey says. “It seems like a problem with no immediate end,” just a few months before the presidential elections in November.
Source: With information from AFP and other sources.
