by Staff Reporter | May 27, 2026 | Economy, News
By Staff Reporter |
A new analysis of housing data found that less than half of households in Arizona could afford their monthly mortgage in 2025.
A new report from the Common Sense Institute (CSI) determined that only 42% of Arizona households could afford their mortgages last year.
In 2019, 66% of Arizona households could afford their monthly mortgages.
The report also found that the state faces a 56,000-unit housing shortfall, and estimated a long-term cumulative housing deficit of 110,800 units.
Based on those estimations, CSI predicted that it would take well over a century — 119 years — to close the housing gap in Arizona.
CSI found that Arizona households need to make $87,000 annually or nearly 60 hours of work per month at the average hourly wage rate ($35.10) to afford a typical home mortgage. In 2019, the hours of work per month needed to afford an average mortgage amounted to just under 40 hours.
CSI’s analysis found that housing costs remain elevated while building permits have declined.
Although home prices fell by about 3% in 2025, the average home was estimated to cost nearly $42,000 (or 11%) above the pre-pandemic pricing — nowhere close to historical trends or price-to-income ratios. Home prices peaked in 2022.
At present, the average house in Arizona costs nearly $421,000. That figure represents a 3.4% decline from summer 2024 and an 8.6% decline since summer 2022. However, that average home cost sits $142,900 higher than the average cost in 2019.
As of February, the average 30-year mortgage rate was over 6%.
Compared to the earliest data provided (2015), many things have increased greatly for Arizonans: the average home price (doubled), the average mortgage payment (nearly tripled), and the hours of work required (nearly doubled).
The average home pricing in December 2015 was just over $211,100, with a 30-year mortgage rate just under 4%, an average mortgage payment of $800, and the average wage rate of $23.23 requiring 35 hours of work per month.
Average monthly mortgage payments doubled from 2019 to 2025: about $1,000 in 2019 to $2,000 in 2025.
The state issued just under 51,000 residential building permits last year, representing a 14% decline from 2024.
Though lower, last year’s total permits fell within the range for keeping up with population growth and housing demand. CSI estimated that the state needs between 45,000 to 60,000 permits annually to keep pace with growth and demand. Maintaining that safety range doesn’t appear to be the reality shaping up for 2026, however. The state authorized about 3,000 new housing units in January, putting the state on pace to have 36,700 units by the year’s end — well below the necessary annual permit range.
This report on the state of housing was released around the same time as the latest employment report from the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee (JEC).
The JEC found that the unemployment rate remained unchanged in April (4.7%), which is higher than the national unemployment rate (4.3%). The state had an increase in about 8,100 net payroll jobs, one of 42 states to experience an increase; in March, the state had a 1,900-job increase.
Over the past year, Arizona added 13,300 payroll jobs and the unemployment rate rose by 0.5%.
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by Staff Reporter | May 26, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap turned over potential noncitizen voter records to Attorney General Kris Mayes for review on Friday.
Heap’s referral follows two letters from the attorney general’s office — one from early April, one from earlier this week — warning Heap that his delay in referring the alleged noncitizen voters to them violated state law, as first reported by Votebeat.
Heap responded to the first letter claiming that he need not comply with the cited statute because their office had not yet canceled the voter registrations of the individuals identified as potential noncitizen voters. Instead, Heap placed those identified voters in a “Not Eligible” status pending submission of documentary proof of citizenship.
Heap gave notice of the status change of the potential noncitizen voters to Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in early March, citing the Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) as justification. The attorney general office contends that Heap had misapplied his duties toward proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration to registered voters.
In that notice, Heap refused to hand over the potential noncitizen voters’ information to Fontes.
Similarly, Heap told the attorney general’s office in response to its first notice letter to him that a referral of the potential noncitizen voters would be “premature.” In mid-February, Heap announced to the public that he was referring the noncitizen voters to the attorney general’s office in addition to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO).
So far, Heap’s office has only submitted a referral of the alleged noncitizen voters to the MCAO.
In the most recent letter from Mayes’ office, Criminal Division Chief Counsel Nicholas Klingerman rejected Heap’s legal interpretation as incorrect.
“You cannot place ‘not eligible’ holds on these registered voters and fail to issue criminal referrals,” wrote Klingerman. “The statute does not authorize an indefinite administrative suspension for the purported noncitizen registrants, nor does it allow county election officials to choose which prosecuting agency may investigate these possible violations of state law.”
State law requires county recorders to cancel the voter registrations and notify the county attorney and attorney general for possible investigation of any registered voters for which the recorder has obtained information and confirmed noncitizenship.
In March, the MCAO began the early stages of its investigation into over 200 individuals over allegations of noncitizen voting. The recorder’s office identified the individuals through the federal database expanded last October by the Department of Homeland Security for the purposes of voter roll citizenship verification, the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements.
The most recent letter from Mayes’ office also accused Heap of intentionally misleading the public.
“At this point, your insistence that you are following the law is wrong at best and purposefully misleading at worst. Moreover, your statement that criminal referrals would not be appropriate despite having acknowledged the requirement to refer these individuals to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and making a criminal referral to MCAO, suggests your intent is to mislead,” said Klingerman.
Last April, all 15 counties throughout the state began undertaking certain efforts to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls following a lawsuit.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | May 26, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused Arizona Democrats of lying about conditions at the immigration detention facility in Mesa.
Arizona Democratic Reps. Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03) and Greg Stanton (AZ-04) claimed to have witnessed last week “inhumane” and “alarming” issues — specifically, overcrowding and plumbing — at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center (AROCC), located within the Mesa Gateway Airport.
Ansari and Stanton said AROCC has consistently exceeded its intended capacity (about 160 people) this year. The facility has reportedly exceeded 770 detainees on a daily basis.
The pair also took issue with AROCC holding illegal immigrants past the intended 12-hour holding time which the facility was designed to support — sometimes, for several days. A proposed bill from the pair would mandate, in part, that ICE facilities may only hold illegal aliens for 12 hours at a time.
Ansari said in a press release that their observations indicated conditions were “starkly different from the picture ICE presents during scheduled visits.”
Stanton said the discomfort of illegal aliens in these detention facilities was reason enough to stop mass deportations.
“[W]e’re going to fight every effort to expand [mass deportations] — including the kinds of dangerous, overcrowded operations we’ve seen right here in Mesa,” said Stanton.
A spokesman with DHS said allegations of issues with overcrowding and plumbing were false, per a statement received by the Arizona Mirror.
“Any allegation of overcrowding at AROCC is false,” said the spokesman. “There are no recurring plumbing issues. On the rare instance when a toilet issue occurs, the facility staff immediately moves detainees from the affected cell and maintenance is immediately initiated.”
DHS has taken an active presence online and in the media to debunk claims of wrongdoing on the agency’s part.
Another recent viral story accused the Trump administration of wrongfully prolonging the detainment of a mother and father traveling to see their adult son dying of terminal cancer. DHS clarified that the parents were detained for reentering the country illegally after their fatally ill son had already returned to Mexico.
Last week’s visit from Ansari and Stanton constituted the latest in a series of actions taken by Arizona’s congressional Democrats to prioritize illegal aliens within their respective offices’ scope of constituent services. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (AZ-07) has also been party to these frequent visits to immigration detention facilities and other similar relief and advocacy efforts.
AZ Free News reported last month that a majority of Grijalva’s press releases, X posts, and official remarks in congressional records pertained to defending illegal aliens from the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Arizona’s top Democrats say that issues at AROCC and other ICE practices justify a budgetary freeze for ICE pending a total overhaul of agency practices.
While Arizona’s congressional Democrats have met with illegal aliens in ICE custody and advocated for their release, Arizona’s congressional Republicans have assisted with putting those illegal aliens into ICE custody.
Earlier this month, Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh (AZ-08) announced he had assisted with the capture of three illegal aliens while tagging along with Border Patrol on a border security sweep.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | May 26, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
Data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reveals that assault constitutes the crime most commonly committed in Arizona.
An analysis of the latest data available on the Law Enforcement Agency Reported Crime Analysis Tool (LEARCAT), a Bureau of Justice Statistics database, found nearly 38,700 incidents of simple assault in 2024. This data is limited to the state’s participating law enforcement agencies.
Simple assault refers to both assaults and attempted assaults where the perpetrator didn’t use a weapon or where the victim didn’t sustain a serious or aggravated injury. This classification includes stalking, intimidation, coercion, and hazing, per the FBI.
The research, conducted by the Injury Lawyer Team, estimated that simple assaults occurred about once every 14 minutes in the state.
The second-most common crime reported in Arizona was shoplifting (30,800 incidents), followed by destruction, damage, or vandalism of property (27,500 incidents); drug equipment violations (27,400 incidents); all other larceny (21,100 incidents); drug or narcotic violations (21,000 incidents); motor vehicle theft (10,500 incidents); aggravated assault (10,100 incidents); theft from a motor vehicle (10,100 incidents); and burglary and breaking and entering (9,700 incidents).
Arizona experiencing simple assault as its most common crime was consistent with the national trend. In 2024, there were over two million recorded incidents of simple assault nationwide. 28 states reported simple assault as their most common crime.
Preliminary data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program reflected a decline in violent crime in 2025 so steep that it could prove historical, per FBI Director Kash Patel. Overall, violent crime was predicted to have decreased by an estimated 9%.
“The 2025 crime data in this report shows the single largest decrease in violent crime and murder since 1937 – as well as huge decreases across the board in terms of aggravated assault, rape, and robbery,” said Patel. “Over the last 14 months, we made major transformations at the FBI, and these results show those changes are working. This FBI will continue to stack these wins for the American people under President Trump and always Back the Blue every step of the way.”
Murder and non-negligent manslaughter decreased by an estimated 18%; rape decreased by an estimated 7%; robbery decreased by an estimated 18%; and aggravated assault decreased by an estimated 7%.
The program received data from more than 17,000 agencies representing 96% of the population (in 2024, the program relied on data from nearly 16,700 agencies).
Part of this preliminary steep decline came from data submitted by the Phoenix Police Department. Phoenix police reflected a decline in violent crime, including homicide, over the last few years.
2025 had 1,000-plus fewer incidents of violent crime reported than 2024.
Arizona Department of Public Safety (AZDPS) data agrees with this pattern of decline in violent crimes reflected by Phoenix police. AZDPS reported that violent crime — more than 27,100 cases with 44% clearance rate — declined by more than 13% compared to 2024.
AZDPS data also reflected an overall decline in violent crime over the past five years.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | May 25, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes advised the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to ignore Recorder Justin Heap’s claim of exclusive authority on drop box establishment.
Mayes sent a letter to the board and Heap on Friday claiming Heap’s counsel had made “unfounded threats of criminal liability” for telling the board that they would face felony charges for managing ballot drop boxes.
Mayes cited the state’s current and past two Elections Procedures Manuals (EPMs) to back her assessment. The EPMs recognized that boards of supervisors or their designees approve all ballot drop-off locations and drop-boxes.
“Justin Heap is wrong about drop boxes,” said Mayes. “He should immediately work with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in good faith to ensure a well run [sic] election.”
Notice from Heap’s counsel closely preceded a vote taken by the board earlier this week to designate 12 drop box locations throughout the county for the upcoming primary election in July. These drop boxes are scheduled to become active at the end of June.
Heap claimed the board never consulted him about the proposed drop box locations.
Heap has maintained that the board unlawfully awarded themselves control over ballot drop boxes, according to a recent ruling from the Arizona Superior Court.
The board was ruled to have unlawfully usurped the recorder’s elections authority and resources. The court determined the board didn’t have the “plenary authority” it claimed over elections administration, and ordered the board to restore key elections functions and resources to the recorder, especially the IT staff, servers, databases, software, and elections systems.
“The Court has already ruled that the Board does not have unlimited authority over elections, yet it continues attempting to exercise powers Arizona law assigns to the Recorder,” said Heap.
Heap also claimed the board tried to bring him into their meeting for “a surprise public interrogation” on short notice.
The board plans to appeal the ruling; Heap expressed concern that ongoing litigation this late in the election season will cause legal and operational issues.
Vice chair of the board, Debbie Lesko, told “The Conservative Circus” on Friday that she and the rest of the board have worked earnestly “in good faith” to avoid this ongoing court battle with Heap. Lesko argued that it wasn’t possible for the board to abide by the superior court ruling.
“This is really complicated and it’s not black and white,” said Lesko. “There’s competing state laws that say both the recorder and the elections department have jurisdiction over the same exact election procedures in some cases.”
On Thursday, Lesko and Chair Kate Brophy McGee petitioned Heap in a public statement and letter to agree to public, recorded meetings to negotiate elections administration.
The letter claimed that certain progress between the board’s elections department and recorder’s office concerning this month’s jurisdictional elections and the July primary elections were later refused by Heap.
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