My new piece on home affordability at AZ Central

I have a new op-ed at the Arizona Republic that goes into the local implications of the chain of displacement that I described in a recent substack post.

Here are some visualizations and data sources cited in the op-ed.

Figure 1 compares the average hourly earnings for the US and for the Phoenix metro area.

Figure 1

The reference to a 90% increase in Phoenix’s median rent comes from Zillow. As Figure 2 shows, rent in Phoenix has been rising much faster than average for most of the past 8 years.

Figure 2

My estimate of the number of hours required to pay rent comes from combining these data, shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 - the y-axis is the number of work hours required to pay monthly rent ($ signs are a typo)

The rise in rents in Phoenix, as in most cities, has been highly sensitive to incomes. Using the Zillow rent index for each ZIP code and income data from the IRS, Figure 4 shows the relative change in rents across ZIP codes in the Phoenix metro area.

Figure 4

Figure 5 shows the rise in rent/income levels across Phoenix from 2015 to 2023, again using data from Zillow and the IRS. The figures cited in the AZCentral piece are based on two hypothetical ZIP codes with income approximated 20% above the poorest ZIP code and with income approximately 300% above the poorest ZIP code.

Figure 5