| NEWS | Renter from p 10 hesitated to place the blame on firms like Decron, however. “I’ll tell you that gener- ally rental homes and apartments have always been investments, whether by a mom and pop, a pension fund, or a home builder, regardless of geography,” he wrote in an email. “The Valley and the state are in the midst of a massive housing supply crisis. This crisis — along with cities, towns, and NIMBY [Not In My Backyard] neighbors standing in the way of new homes being built — is directly responsible for driving up rents,” he said. Of course, as Decron acknowledged in its announcement of the sale, the heightened demand for housing means big profits for investors. And strife for renters. Ken Volk, founder of Arizona Tenants Advocates, said Lake’s situation was all too familiar in his line of work. All day, Volk fields a flood of calls from tenants across the Valley, seeking help breaking leases or dealing with maintenance issues. There was a point in Band-Aid on a problem,” she said. Families were dealing with systemic homelessness. She saw how issues would “pile on” for Ascent at Papago Park was once affordable. Then, it got the attention of a California real estate giant. the last year, he told New Times, when the majority of those calls were about rent hikes. That’s slowed some now, he thinks because the wave of rent hikes has already crested at many apartment complexes. “Sometimes the rents are almost doubling,” he said. Lake’s nearly $500 increase was on the high end — but certainly not unusual. “It’s a good time for landlords now.” Lake’s family has lived in Arizona for generations. She grew up in Phoenix, and lived for a time in Sedona before returning to the Valley. Over lunch, Lake told of hardships that she encountered in her life. One of her two sons died in 2006, when he was a young adult living in San Diego. Her other son is now in his 40s, but cannot work; he has schizo-affective disorder. He had worked odd jobs over the years, for a time as a bagger at a Fry’s Food and Drug super- market. But those jobs never lasted long. Just a year or two ago, Lake said, she was hopeful about her future. She received a master’s degree in counseling in 2016. “I felt I had a good 10 years left to work,” she said. Then, the pandemic hit. Through her years as a counselor, Lake 12 said, she saw how the social services system sometimes failed those in need. She recalled seeing nonprofit CEOs with cushy salaries, while programs were strapped for funding. “A lot of times, it’s like putting a people, until they found themselves on the streets. Lake sees this pattern in her own life. She has been hospitalized several times since the start of the pandemic. When she came down with COVID-19 in January 2021, she found herself still unable to work after recovering from the worst of the virus, and was forced to quit her job. This May, Lake was hospitalized again with the flu. Her son gets a few hundred dollars a month in disability pay, and Lake has some retirement income. Her ex-husband, until this summer, had been helping support the two as well. But recently he found himself in finan- cial trouble and hasn’t been able to send them money. “It’s like a domino effect,” Lake said. The friends and family she thought she could once rely on for financial support had started to struggle with inflation and cost-of- living hikes. “I was on a panel about homelessness once. We were brain- Katya Schwenk storming great ideas,” Lake said, pausing for a moment. “I guess they don’t happen.” When Volk, the tenant advocate, gets calls from people in the same situation as Lake, there’s little advice he can give them. “I give them the statute that says the state is the sole party to regulate rent,” he said. “And the state chooses not to.” He joked, wryly, that Arizona might as well be telling them to “go sleep under a bridge.”’ Lake said she has been calling around, looking for options. She has spoken to nonprofits about assistance with housing for her son, and spoken to the city of Phoenix about possible rent relief. It has all been difficult to navigate, she said. Nothing, so far, has come through. Lake sat at her dining room table, amid stacks of medical bills and other paper- work, feeling overwhelmed, she said. She wasn’t sure if she could even pay the rent. She went through the options facing her: She could ask her brother for money, or for a room; she could try harder to find a more affordable place; or she could try to bargain with the property manager, but so far, they hadn’t been responding. “What scares me is this is not an isolated incident,” Lake said. If she moved somewhere new, how long would she have until the rent went up again? “I feel like homelessness is breathing down my neck,” she said. JULY 14TH–JULY 20TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
