Prior to COVID-19, 44.6% of Arizona residents were rent-burdened, meaning that rent made up 1/3rd or more of their income. Meanwhile, 1 in 7 residents lived in poverty earning less than $13,000/year for a single person and less than $22,000/year for families of 2+. Tenants, especially Black, Latine, and Indigenous peoples, now stare down financial ruin while slumlords and developers cheer on soaring profits.

As of May 2021, ~250,000 AZ households are slightly confident at most about their ability to pay next month’s rent. The assistance is a bandaid, and it doesn’t help that rent is rising. The COVID-19 “moratorium” still let thousands of evictions through our court system, so simply continuing down that line won’t fix these problems.

These evictions displace communities, leave records that make finding housing even harder, and ultimately put lives at risk, the main thing the CDC purportedly wanted to avoid. Despite those intentions, we’ve seen slumlords hastily issuing notices (if not abusing their power further with terrifying sexual harassment) to tenants who lost their income, struggled with utility bills, and even contracted COVID-19. Tenants are then forced to grapple with landlord attorneys like those who helped illegally evict hundreds of renters from homes protected under the CARES Act without their own representation in "digital courtrooms". After that, houseless tenants are also particularly vulnerable to heat-related illness in the summer months. In 2020, a record of 308 heat deaths were recorded in Maricopa County, 59% of those deaths were unhoused tenants.

We cannot settle for assistance or to delay the end of a “moratorium” that leaves tenants uncertain of our futures in our homes. Evictions and foreclosures must come to a halt, and we can’t stave off widespread immiseration without bolder solutions that tackle the commodification of housing.

Therefore, we demand:

1. Abolish rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the state of emergency plus one month. No one knows how long we will struggle with the pandemic. We can’t just prolong evictions until some arbitrary date. Waiting until the end of the state of the emergency with a month extra as a cushion will give Arizonans room to avoid precarity.

2. Cancel all rent debt, late fees, and legal costs retroactively. These punitive fees stack up, digging the people least able to pay furthest into debt. Meanwhile, tenants, who almost never have lawyers, have to pay the court fees for landlords that almost always do (and typically win just as often).

3. End all evictions and foreclosures. Despite the moratorium, eviction filings in Arizona are almost back to pre-pandemic levels. Housing is a human right. No one should be kicked out of their home under normal circumstances and especially not during a pandemic.

4. The right to counsel in eviction cases. The vast majority of landlords (87% of plaintiffs) have legal representation while nearly all tenants (0.3% of defendants) do not. We must help tenants defend themselves in court by fully funding legal services and making an attorney available to any tenant who wants one.

5. Freeze rent increases. As new residents flock to Arizona, the housing market has surged. Landlords are thus incentivized to raise rents without regard for the residents that get priced out. To push back, freeze rent increases for the next two years before enacting permanent rent control.