Affordable housing construction has reached a turning point: More than 91,000 affordable apartments were completed nationwide in 2024 — the highest total in the past decade.  An in Metro Phoenix, developers built 4,600 affordable apartments in five tears, which is triple the volume that were constructed pre-pandemic.

These findings come from a new RentCafe.com analysis  tracking how affordable housing development has changed across the U.S. over the last 10 years, by comparing two five-year periods (2015–2019 and 2020–2024).

Phoenix ranks 19th nationwide for affordable housing construction, completing more than 4,600 units in the five years after the pandemic, triple the volume pre-pandemic. 

Here are the details:

• The Phoenix metro area completed 4,625 affordable apartments between 2020 and 2024.
• This represents 6.27% of the total number of apartments built in the metro area (73,758 units).
• Phoenix’s affordable housing sector is expanding rapidly, with a whopping 206% increase in new apartments over the past five years — that’s more than triple the volume added between 2015 and 2019.
• However, among the nation’s top 20 affordable housing builders, Phoenix allocates one of the smallest shares (6.27%) of new development to this sector. By contrast, roughly one-third of all new construction in New York City and San Francisco is income-restricted, while only Dallas, TX, had a smaller share (4.9%).