Report ranks Arizona among least affordable states
May 4
A new report from the Common Sense Institute ranks Arizona as one of the least affordable states to live in across the country.
Since 2019, household costs in the state have risen faster than the national average, with residents spending about $19,300 more per year on essential expenses compared with the national average of $15,400.
Housing costs remain the primary driver of affordability challenges. Arizona ranks as the seventh least affordable state in the country.
Katie Ratlief, executive director of the Common Sense Institute, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the report’s findings.
“Arizona was known as a very affordable place to live, high quality of life, low cost of living, but everyone has felt like that’s changed lately,” Ratlief said, “…things are just getting more expensive, and it’s harder to get by on the same income in Arizona, and the data shows.”
According to Ratlief, across all 50 states, housing is the largest driver of affordability, as housing costs have gone up roughly 60% in Arizona since 2020.
“We’ve seen dramatic increases in the cost of child care in the state,” Ratlief discussed, “…it’s gone up by 42 percent since 2018. That’s because we’ve lost half of our child care providers over the last 20 years, so it’s a simple supply and demand issue.”
Ratlief emphasized that while utilities are factored into the costs of housing, the largest driver of that housing cost is the cost of rent, or mortgage, or the price of a home.
“A lot of people were moving here, but in the five years leading up to the Great Recession, we built 400,000 homes, so that supply was keeping pace with demand,” Ratlief said. “In the 10 years following the recession, we only built 200,000 homes, so we slowed way down in building, but the number of people coming here has not slowed down.”
