Arizona Town Hall and the Arizona Housing Coalition want Tucson residents to help solve the housing problem, and registration is still open for a free community event Thursday.

The event runs from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Nov. 12 at the YWCA of Southern Arizona, 525 N. Bonita Ave. Check-in begins at 8:30 a.m.

Arizona Town Hall is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that holds fact-based community conversations across the state and publishes a report on where participants agree. The event will bring together local experts and residents to discuss potential solutions to the housing crisis and allows community members to share feedback, ideas, concerns and questions.

“We pick one topic a year that we really focus on, and then we have fact-based conversations with communities to try to solve the problem,” said Arizona Town Hall President Tara Jackson, who has been in the role since 2006. “This year our topic is housing. Last year it was workforce development, the year before it was voting and elections. These are always topics that are at the very top of the most critical issues that everyone’s trying to solve.”

Arizona Town Hall says home prices have risen by more than $160,000 since 2019, homelessness hit an all-time high in 2024 and eviction filings are at record levels. The Tucson event is one of several housing events the group is holding across the state, from Phoenix and Flagstaff to Florence, through January.

The event starts with an overview of the topic and shares handouts and reports with attendees to help them understand more about the state of housing in the region.

Then comes the community aspect.

“The biggest part of the program and what I love about it is that it’s not talking heads up front. It’s the people who show up who are having conversations at their table, who are figuring out how to solve that problem within their community, what works for them. That is the bulk of the program,” Jackson said. “Then what we do is looking for where we see consensus or agreement with everyone in the room. We create a report about that and that report is published on our website.”

Austin Bates, an employee of the Arizona Housing Coalition, said housing is one of the most personal things that people deal with on a day-to-day basis.

“It’s their home. It’s where they go to feel safe, secure, to have friends and family over, pets,” he said. “I really just appreciate the opportunity to have people come together in a room that may disagree about how we solve our housing crisis, but want to work together to make sure that everybody has access to a home.”

Bates said housing affordability has been a topic in every state this past year, no matter its politics, and the coalition is glad to keep the conversation going and work toward solutions.

Nearly 100 community members have already signed up to attend the event, which Jackson said allows for important conversations that include different perspectives.

Bates said it takes courage to have these types of conversations.

“It takes a lot of courage to even have that conversation with somebody that you disagree with. I appreciate Arizona Town Hall for bringing people together to have those hard conversations and facilitating it in a way that doesn’t let fear dominate the room,” Bates said.

The event is free, and registration is still open at aztownhall.org. Jackson and Bates both hope more people sign up to talk about an issue that affects everyone.

“I just really want to make sure that folks feel comfortable saying what they really feel about housing,” Bates said. “I think a lot of times when we talk about building new homes, everybody wants it, but we don’t have the harder conversations about why people don’t want it in their local neighborhood. (It’s) only by talking about the truth that we’re going to be able to really get to the root causes and address them in a way that works for everybody.”

Christy Russell is a journalism major at the University of Arizona and Tucson Spotlight intern. Contact her at crussell68@arizona.edu.

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