The state House could soon debate
a bill that would allow development on property owned by churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious institutions. The idea is called "YIGBY," or "yes in God’s backyard" — it’s a play on the idea of NIMBY, or not in my backyard. The measure is one of several at the state Capitol this year that aims to alleviate the housing shortage and increase the supply of affordable housing; this proposal has a requirement for at least 40% of the units to go to low-income residents for 55 years. Representative David Livingston, a Peoria Republican, is the measure’s sponsor. “The purpose of this bill in my eyes is to get the religious institutions more involved with the local communities," Livingston said. Among other provisions, the bill sets up requirements for religious institutions to be able to put single or multi-family housing on their property: they include that the institution has to have owned the site for at least three years and isn’t within 75 feet of a neighboring site. There are also guidelines for height and other requirements of the developments. When the bill went through a House committee a couple of weeks ago, it won both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition — as many housing bills do. Livingston says he’s working on an amendment that he hopes brings skeptics on board. “I think there’s a lot of people in this nation, in this state that need help. I think religious institutions, as a general rule, can help those people better than government can," Livingston said. Mary Crozier, president of the North Central Phoenix Homeowners Association, is among those skeptics and joined The Show to discuss the bill, starting with what she thinks about it.
Full conversation
MARY CROZIER: Well, I think before we even talk about that we have to discuss how we got here, why affordable housing is now a hot topic in Arizona and back in before that on the pandemic, private equity firms and investors literally across the country went on a shopping spree and this just didn't impact Arizona but it impacted other states like Texas and they literally purchased one out of every four single family homes that were sold, so 25% of the market. As a result of that, housing prices went up 56% and rents went up 47% just by that one particular event. So couple that with that Arizona is one of the very few states that has stricter short term vacation rental legislation, that I just read in Scottsdale, 30% of the homes in Scottsdale are short-term vacation rentals. So when you couple those two together, and I'm sure there's some overlap with investors owning short-term vacation rentals, we're talking about 45% of the market that no one has control over except for the investors and the people that have purchased those things. So my biggest concern about most of the housing bills that have been put forth is there's absolutely no provision to prevent that from happening again and there's no provision that calls for affordable housing that has any teeth in it.
BRODIE: So, so in your mind then, is that the issue in terms of short term rentals and making sure that non-investors own single family homes, is that what the state needs to be doing before all, all this other stuff, all these other bills, the state should take those two issues up first in your mind? CROZIER: Well, there's several issues that can take under consideration that and what I call our low hanging fruit. For example, Arizona is one of six that does not allow inclusionary zoning, and that means if somebody were to build 100 apartments, that there would be a provision that a certain percentage of those would go to low or workforce housing. We don't allow that, so that's a state barrier. The second obviously is the short term vacation rental. We don't, there's another tax, an incremental tax that say, for example, we have a situation in our neighborhood where there was one lot, an out of state developer came in and wanted to rezone it, to put 200 apartments on an acre or 2 acres, I think, and there's no fee. The developer pays for how that will impact traffic, public services, infrastructure that's all put on the shoulders of the taxpayer. So there are other things we could be doing right away that would immediately impact affordability and the concept that if you build more, you create more density, all the prices will go down. Well, not in this market. We have what, 2000 to 300 people moving here a day, and it would take a very long time to reduce our housing prices just based on volume.
BRODIE: Would you agree though that there does need to be some more supply coming online, right? Like we don't have enough housing units for, for the people who live here and to your point, the people who are moving here. So given that, I'm assuming that that is something you would agree with, at least to some extent, our churches, synagogues, mosques, other religious institutions, like, is that a place that we should be looking at maybe putting some of this housing? CROZIER: Well, I have two points to that. First of all, I think you had John Wake, who's a real estate assessor who was on a week or two ago, and he said that home availability is up 40%, and these are homes that are 1,000 to 2,000 square feet. The problem is the prices haven't dropped, so there is housing availability right now, but again, is it affordable? My concern about churches, and I'll just give you our neighborhood as an example, is on one street from Missouri to Northern on Central Avenue, we have eight church properties. Our entire neighborhood has about 100 acres of church property. So if you can put 200 units on 2 acres, which was recently passed on an adjacent street. So now picture, let's say half of the acreage turns into high density apartments, so 50 times 200, what that would do to the community would be turn our streets into parking lots. Our infrastructure we were plotted in the late 1800s. We don't have new infrastructure and to have a bill like this, yes in God's backyard where there's absolutely zero zoning oversight. And residents not having the ability to participate in the process, I think would be devastating.
BRODIE: Let me ask you about one of the things that you just mentioned about parking, because I believe that there is a provision in this bill that would require that the units that would be built on these religious grounds have at least one parking space per unit. Does that mitigate your concern at all that people wouldn't necessarily be parking on the street, there would probably be more traffic, but the people who live there would at least have a place to put a car. CROZIER: Well, if you look at the church property at Bethany and Central, there's no parking on Bethany. There's no parking on Central.
BRODIE: That's a very big property. CROZIER: That's a very big property. So let's say you live in this unit, you and your partner, spouse, friend, whatever, and you have two cars and you got one parking place. One, where do you put the other car? Can't park it on the street. What if you have guests over? Where do they park? So that's why one size fits all does not work. This may work perfectly fine for a church somewhere else, but it wouldn't work fine for the churches in our neighborhood. It's just very loosely written. There are a lot of holes in this, and I think if it was a bill that was presented better and took into account different situations around the state, it might be more palatable, but this definitely wouldn't, and any bill that cuts out. A local resident's ability to have a voice, there's a reason for that.
BRODIE: So let me ask you about that, and, and I want to know what about this bill maybe in your mind would make it more palatable. It sounds like giving residents the ability to have more of a say, maybe public hearings or something like that would be one of those. Are there other things that lawmakers could potentially look at that would make you say, OK, this could potentially work? CROZIER: Possibly, but the writers of the bill have not reached out to neighborhood groups.
BRODIE: If they were to reach out, what would you tell them to do? CROZIER: Well, we would certainly sit down and make sure where what parts were not palatable. For example, on the height requirement, it can be as tall as the nearest building a quarter mile away. it could be as tall as three stories. It could be tall as the highest point on the church property. Well, what is that? Is that a steeple? The city of Phoenix doesn't have height requirements for a steeple. There's too many unknowns in this bill as it stands, it's a definite no for us.
