![\"Mayor](\"https:\/\/www.livabl.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Mayor-Orsborn-portrait-vertical-e1663613002707.jpg\")
<\/a>Mayor Osborn is working towards a solution to Buckeye’s housing crisis<\/p><\/div>\n
Livabl spoke to Mayor Osborn about the crisis \u2013 how it happened, what it means for Arizona residents and what needs to happen next.<\/p>\n
What was the build-up to the current situation in Buckeye?<\/strong><\/p>\n We have somewhere around 100,000 people moving to the Phoenix Metro Area from other locations around the country. Over the next decade we\u2019re expecting to see a growth of about a million people.<\/p>\n Between 2000-2010, we were building enough to accommodate that growth. But from 2010 until now we\u2019ve only added about half the number of units needed and still have rapid growth coming in.<\/p>\n Some of that is leftover consequences from the recession. Some of it is builders not wanting to engage to the extent that they did previously. Some of it is simply just the cost of building.<\/p>\n Why did you declare a housing shortage?<\/strong><\/p>\n It seems like builders just can\u2019t build houses fast enough in the area, and that supply\/demand imbalance creates an opportunity for prices to rise. What we\u2019re seeing specifically is housing prices continuing to go up, which prices a lot of people out of the market \u2013 especially the middle-class consumer.<\/p>\n All types of homes are becoming more and more unaffordable. If we don\u2019t figure out how to get more housing through the pipeline, we\u2019re going to stall all this economic growth that we\u2019ve seen in the Phoenix Metro Area over the last 5-10 years. It\u2019s been incredible and successful, but we\u2019ve really got to figure out the housing component. Otherwise, the folks that are coming in and planting their businesses here are going to start saying their employees can\u2019t afford or even find housing in the area. It\u2019s not just a housing issue, it\u2019s an economic development issue as well.<\/p>\n Are there any barriers that builders are facing right now that contribute to the lack of housing?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a perfect storm of barriers that builders are facing right now. My background is land development and construction, and I know that it is incredibly difficult to find help right now to build \u2013 whether it\u2019s horizontal infrastructure, roads, underground or the houses themselves.<\/p>\n The supply chain has been a barrier too, and COVID has not helped anything. You had a lot of shutdowns that affected the supply of goods. It just seemed like everything was working against the building community over the last couple of years.<\/p>\n Getting land entitled and to market fast has been difficult for the last few years. It used to be that you had a lot of developers that had land just waiting and ready to go, but I feel like that\u2019s changed in the last few years.<\/p>\n What role does government play in solving this problem?<\/strong><\/p>\n One thing that we\u2019re trying to bring attention to is the fact that we have a problem that we all need to work together to figure out how to get past those chokepoints and bottlenecks.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s faster ways to run things through approval processes at the city, or if there\u2019s engineering that needs to happen on the construction side before we can approve their development, we want to be able to figure it out together.<\/p>\n Even through the pandemic, Buckeye\u2019s single-family home and residential market has stayed relatively strong. Right now, there\u2019s over 10,000 multi-family homes in the approval process somewhere in our pipeline, so there\u2019s a lot going on in Buckeye. But each project has different challenges depending on where they\u2019re located.<\/p>\n There\u2019s not a one-size-fits-all solution for the development community. So, we want to go project by project to figure out a solution.<\/p>\n