Phoenix’s Metro Area Experiences Growing Pains
W. Boston Street in downtown Chandler bustles with restaurants, shops and new housing construction. Photo by Tahreem Ashraf.
Few know more about the inner workings of Chandler, Arizona, a booming city in the southern part of Phoenix’s metropolitan area, than Micah Miranda, its director of economic development. One of his roles is to make Chandler a place that attracts talented professionals, who are increasingly coming from out of state.
“Every morning on the drive in on the freeway, I see all these California license plates,” Miranda said with a chuckle. “They’re here; they’re everywhere!”
Miranda’s observation is evidence of a truth in Arizona supported by data. Phoenix is seeing a population surge fueled by out-of-state migration, one that is outpacing its current real estate market and quickly eliminating any hopes for a more affordable, suburban lifestyle in outlying cities like Chandler.
The 2020 census found that the Phoenix metropolitan area is currently the fastest growing in the nation. Chandler’s population specifically grew about 15 percent to 272,011 in 2020 from 236,123 a decade earlier. Projections from the Maricopa Association of Governments expect Chandler’s population to reach well over 300,000 by 2030.
A 2020 study by the same group found that Californians account for 19 percent of households moving to Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix and its metro area. More transplants hail from California than the next top three states combined.
Graphic shows the states that are fueling population growth in Arizona. Graphic courtesy of City of Chandler.
Other suburbs are seeing similar growth. Buckeye, for example, a city in the western-most part of Phoenix, almost doubled its population between 2010 and 2020. Goodyear, which neighbors Buckeye, grew to almost 100,000 in 2020 from 65,275 residents in 2010.
In Chandler, the growth has been intentional. The economic development team and city officials target companies that bring jobs in high-tech manufacturing, automotive and aerospace technology, as well as IT and software development.
“Compatibility is important to us,” said Miranda, who emphasized that the city’s economic-development plan is not single-minded and takes the idea of being a “good neighbor” into account.
One of Chandler’s biggest economic success stories has been Intel, which first brought employees to Chandler in 1979 and now employs 12,000 people, making it the city’s largest employer. Plans are under way for Intel to expand and bring another 3,000 jobs to Chandler by 2024.
One side effect of all this expansion and economic development is its impact on the housing market. Homes are scarce and expensive. A study from Gruen Gruen + Associates found that Chandler is short about 23,000 affordable housing units.
“The city can only do so much,” said Miranda, despite mentioning possible zoning changes that, if approved, would shift some retail space to residential use.
Micah Miranda, Chandler’s economic development director, explains growth patterns in the city. Photo by Farah Javed.
Sharyn Younger, a real estate broker for Copper Summit in Chandler, describes the current market as “frenzied” and “insane,” and prices are going up astronomically. A 2022 analysis by the Cromford Report found that the median home price in greater Phoenix has almost doubled to $470,000 since February 2018.
Properties also are selling within days, and investors make up an increasing number of buyers, which limits the supply.
“I have buyers that call me crying,” Younger said. “They’re just not getting their offers accepted because of the competition.”
According to Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, the entire state of Arizona is short about 270,000 units that are needed across all demographics, from affordable to luxury housing. Ashlee Tziganuk, who specializes in housing research at the Morrison Institute, says the shortage can be traced back to the 2008 Great Recession when homes stopped being built.
“Essentially, we just have never really caught back up with our housing stock…we’re just in a position right now where the supply is not meeting the demand,” said Tziganuk.
The housing crunch is not just happening in the suburbs. The impact of high prices and low supply is also being felt inside the city limits of Phoenix.
“I haven’t seen anything good,” said Ylenia Aguilar, a school-board member who serves Osborn, a district in central Phoenix. She cites a rise in homeless youth as her chief concern.
“I want to say growth is great and amazing, but it hasn’t been in my community,” Aguilar said. “We obviously did not plan for this growth, and we are not meeting the needs of the most vulnerable populations.”
Another effect of growth is increasing diversity. Chandler, a historically white area, is becoming more ethnically mixed. According to Census data, the percentage of Chandler’s white population has declined to 58 percent in 2020 from 77 percent in 1990, and the percentages of all minority groups have been growing steadily.
Arizona at large is only expected to become more diverse. Eileen Diaz McConnell, a professor and demographer at ASU’s School of Transborder Studies, says that the Arizona Latino population makes up almost a third of the electorate.
This percentage is only expected to increase as first-generation Mexican immigrants continue come of voting age. In her research, McConnell found that over half the state’s population that is under 18 years old now consists of minorities.
“We know that racial diversification is increasing,” McConnell said.
McConnell points out that Arizona’s white population is both shrinking and getting older, and disparities between age groups are contributing to cultural conflicts.
“We have a lot of people who came here to retire,” said McConnell. “They are not interested in the quality of the schools, and they are not interested in paying more taxes.”
Lindsay Love, a Chandler school-board member, has witnessed cultural shifts in the city. Photo courtesy of Love.
Some are seeing these tensions play out in real time, like Lindsay Love, the first and only black member of Chandler’s school board. Following her election in 2018, Love found herself the subject of death threats, online attacks and intimidation, which was driven by a white, fringe minority.
Love points to the city’s origin as a ranching and farming town and the rapid changes driven by the tech industry as the reasons behind these cultural clashes.
Legacy families “are not liking to see the change,” said Love. “I can understand it on some level; right next to my community was a farm, now it’s a Starbucks and some IT businesses.”