Northern Arizona mayors look for a solution to the housing crisis

PRESCOTT, AZ (AZFamily) — Northern Arizona is home to beautiful landscapes that draw in people from all over the world – but these cities from Sedona to Payson and everywhere in between are dealing with a housing crisis.

Mayors from across the High Country came together Thursday to talk about the impact short-term rentals have on their communities and possible solutions.

Sedona mayor Scott Jablow said short-term rentals have created a housing shortage as almost 20% of all housing in Sedona are short-term rentals.

“These are not neighborhoods. They’re mini-hotels,” Jablow said. “Because of short-term rentals pushing people that were living in the city out to the outskirts, there’s even less available housing.”

Many areas across the High Country thrive off of tourism, but Jablow said the people who work in that industry can’t afford to live in town.

“People who you know are earning $15 an hour so they’re leaving,” he said. “And then there’s nobody to work.”

He also said they have about 20 homeless students and enrollment has dropped by 12%.

“We have one teacher that was living in her car in the forest because she couldn’t find a place to live,” Jablow said. “That’s not good either.”

Mayor of Jerome Christina “Alex” Barber said the number of children in town has dropped dramatically since she grew up in Jerome.

“So Jerome does not have schools,” she said. “We had our bus route cut from Mingus Union High School because we did not have enough students that got on the bus.”

In nearby Cottonwood, Mayor Ann Shaw said they have a hard time recruiting health care workers, one of their main industries, because of the lack of housing.

“Commercial and medical people that we’re trying to attract, we need to house and the housing is simply not affordable,” Shaw said.

Many mayors point to SB 1350 which prohibits cities from restricting the number of short-term rentals.

Now the mayors want the state to step back in and allow cities to put restrictions on short-term rentals.

“What’s good for big communities is never good for small communities,” Barber said. “So to bring local control back to local communities because we know best.”

The mayors are working together to create restrictions for short-term rentals and asking the state for that change they hope will ease the lack of housing.

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