PHOENIX, AZ — The City of Phoenix is putting $15 million into affordable housing, a move a Valley nonprofit calls a great start with room to grow.
The Phoenix City Council approved a spending plan for the money from the city’s Housing Trust Fund, according to a city news release Oct. 27. Mayor Kate Gallego said the council approved the plan unanimously.
Chicanos Por La Causa, or CPLC, is a nonprofit that builds and manages affordable housing in the Valley. It also offers housing counseling for people preparing to buy a home.
“So many times, the individuals and families that we help, they really don’t know where to begin,” said Patricia Garcia Duarte, a senior vice president that oversees homeownership and real estate development for the group. “They wanna become a homeowner, but they don’t know where to start.”
Duarte said CPLC manages close to 3,000 housing units across four states, and that the nonprofit has watched the need keep getting bigger without enough homes to go around.
“Arizona continues to grow, although our population growth was a little bit less last year, but it’s still growing,” she said. “The growth is outpacing the number of housing units that are needed to meet the demand.”
To respond in part, the City Council created the Housing Trust Fund in 2025. Money from the fund supports the broader Housing Phoenix Plan to increase the number of housing openings. The city estimates Phoenix is short 59,000 affordable and available rental units for households with the greatest needs, according to the release.
“We set an ambitious goal to create or preserve 50,000 units by 2030, but we achieved that goal several years early,” said Mayor Gallego. “We’re now at 71,000, and we’re not stopping.”
The trust fund plan targets six areas:
- $6 million for affordable housing gap financing, through competitive low-interest loans for private and nonprofit affordable housing developments. Individual projects can receive up to $1 million.
- $4 million for city housing redevelopment projects on city-owned properties and other planned city housing, through low-interest loans that will be repaid to fund future projects.
- $2 million to help cover plan review and permit fees for qualifying affordable housing developments, with up to $300,000 for eligible low-income tax credit projects.
- $1 million for pre-approved housing plans for single-family, middle housing, and other infill homes, available to property owners at no cost.
- $1 million for homeownership programs, such as down payment assistance and the Community Land Trust.
- $1 million for eviction prevention through the Eviction Legal Services program with the city’s Human Services Department.
Gallego said the trust fund is a way for the city to step up amid a lack of federal housing money, adding aid is handed out through formulas set decades ago when Phoenix was a much smaller city.
“We need to see funding for some of those great programs so that we have more opportunities to take your tax dollars even further, and to make sure we in Phoenix get our fair share of federal dollars, which we have not traditionally done,” Gallego said.
Garcia Duarte sees this as another tool for nonprofits to help those in need of a place to live, with lots more work to do ahead.
“I believe that once we have more proven models, there’ll be a way to continue increasing those commitments financially.”
Garcia Duarte said she doesn’t know yet when or how the money will go out. The mayor’s team said staff is still working on the timeline.
