Tim Steller You know that feeling you can get when some outsider criticizes a beloved but problematic friend or family member of yours?That's what I felt when reading Rep. Ben Toma's complaint to the Arizona Attorney General about Tucson's new source-of-income ordinance. That ordinance prevents landlords from discriminating against renters on the basis of where they get their rent money — whether it's a regular job or a Section 8 voucher or child support or what have you.
Now, there is plenty to question in the complaint by Toma, who is a real-estate broker from Peoria. For example, the state itself has forbidden cities from taking some steps to encourage affordable housing, such as zoning policies requiring affordable housing in some areas and rent controls. City permitting moves slowIt's no secret that Tucson's Planning and Development Services Department has been deeply backlogged in processing permits. The department has hired more staff and started a new permitting system Oct. 31 that eventually should accelerate the permitting process, but it's not there yet.
The process remains bogged down, in part because of problems moving permit requests that were already in process into the new system, Assistant City Manager Tim Thomure acknowledged in an interview Thursday. Each new unit doesn't automatically benefit the whole market, because some people will move from another metro area or buy a new place as a second home or turn it into a short-term rental. But overall, adding any new housing in a crunched market like ours helps loosen it up and bolsters affordability.
The City Council and the strategy they're following are more focused on trying to incentivize building new affordable housing projects. As Housing and Community Development Director Liz Morales said at the Dec. 20 City Council meeting, they are working on transforming existing city-owned housing, facilitating new affordable-housing developments by a new city entity and by others, trying to get affordable housing built on city-owned land and other related steps.