By Ron Eland -December 6, 2020 Share
In recent years, lack of affordable housing has quickly moved up the Sedona City Council’s list of priorities as the issue continues to worsen.
The proliferation of short-term vacation rentals, rising home prices and a lower-than-average number of multi-family dwellings in the city has resulted in a bit of a perfect storm in terms of Sedona’s shortage of affordable housing.
But a new study is expected to shed some light on the issue and guide the city toward improving the problem while finding a possible solution over the next five years.
The Sedona City Council will be discussing the findings of Elliott D. Pollack & Co., a consulting firm that recently completed Sedona’s housing needs assessment and five-year action plan, on Tuesday, Dec. 3, at 3 p.m.
“The city has long identified the need to address the provision of diverse and affordable housing options, as has been captured in several adopted Community Plans,” Assistant Director of Community Development Warren Campbell said. “The proposed Draft Housing Needs Assessment and five-year Housing Action Plan will focus the attention of the community to address this critical need for the continued success of our community.”
The purpose of the study is to provide the city and its Housing Assessment Advisory Committee with the initial findings of the existing conditions analysis and housing- gap assessment.Advertisement
According to the report, nearly 58% of the renters in Sedona are cost-burdened, paying more than 30% of their household income on rent. The lack of affordable units most affects those households earning less than $50,000 including service workers, teachers and critical service employees such as police and fire fighters.
The study shows the root of the housing problem is threefold. The first is increasing house prices. At the end of the first quarter of 2019, the median single-family home cost in Sedona was $562,500, more than double the state’s average cost.
Many long-term rentals have since been turned into short-term rentals. This has decreased available affordable housing while driving up the cost of those long-term rentals that remain. Finally, Sedona only has 257 units within what would be considered traditional apartment complexes and only 211 occupied single-family attached units or townhomes. This accounts for less than 10% of the city’s total housing units, well below the national average of around 30%.
An overview of the housing situation in the study shows the following:
■ Almost 90% of homeowners live in a single-family home. Another 9% live in a mobile home.
■ Renters live in a variety of housing units, including single-family homes [35%], apartments [28%], condos [12%] and mobile homes [9%].
■ The average monthly rent for Sedona employees across the Verde Valley is $1,210. The highest monthly rent is found in Sedona while the lowest rents are in Camp Verde, Clarkdale and Cottonwood.
■ The federal government has established the standard for housing cost burden as those households that spend more than 30% of household income on rent or mortgage payments. For renter households, 56% of Sedona employees are paying more than 30% of their income for housing including 16% paying more than 50% toward housing. Approximately 19% of homeowners pay more than 30% of income toward housing.
■ About one-third of renters plan on purchasing a home in the next two years and three-quarters prefer owning to renting.
■ Obstacles to homeownership are lack of affordable units, lack of a down payment and not earning enough.
■ 60% who do not live in Sedona would like to live in the city if affordable housing was available. This is an important finding that shows employees would like to live closer to their workplace despite some of the issues they may have with traffic congestion and other tourism-related dislikes.
The study lists several potential solutions: Establishing a community land trust to develop affordable housing; using city-owned land; establishing a rental subsidy project to determine interest from landlords; and a down payment assistance project to determine interest from prospective owners.
“We should put our money where our mouth is on the affordable housing topic,” Councilman Bill Chisholm said last year when the contract for the study was awarded.