On a late April night in Tempe, a calm breeze blew on dozens of people gathered at the top of a hill in Mouer Park, where every night, volunteers give food and other assistance to unhoused people.
The assistance program has been happening for years, but these days, the scene looks much different from just a few months ago. About ten children were there, swerving through the ramadas, playing, yelling or simply sitting by their parents with a puzzled look.
Their presence at the park is one indicator of a new spike of Phoenix area families becoming homeless. Advocates say that until earlier this year, they typically would help three or four families during any given week.
Now they’re assisting more than 40 and spending about $2,000 a night.
“Very quickly in 2026, the number of families needing immediate shelter assistance with nowhere to go in the short term exploded,” homelessness organizer Austin Davis told us.
And with summer’s scorching temperatures around the corner, it’s a trend of huge concern that’s quickly snowballing into a crisis.
The nightly meal in Mouer Park is run by AZ Hugs, a nonprofit Davis founded that became the ire of Tempe officials in a drawn-out battle last year over assisting unhoused people in city parks. Besides food, Davis and company also help people pay for temporary housing in hotels, give them money for bus fare, provide them with clothes and assist in navigating the government and nonprofit bureaucracy for housing or detox programs.
Jonas Quinn lost his job last month, leaving his family of four without a place to live.
Among the newly homeless in the park was Phoenix resident Jonas Quinn, whose family of four left their apartment near 34th Street and McDowell Road at the beginning of April rather than be evicted. His family lost its only income after he was laid off from his job as a chef at The Bistro in Tempe.
They’ve tried getting housing through the Family Housing Hub, a coordinated entry point run by a nonprofit that connects people to the network of major family shelters (also known as 211 because of its phone number).
But that’s been frustrating, Quinn said.
“I’ve contacted 211 plenty of times and tried for all the resources that came with it — not a lot of them were available immediately, so thank God for AZ Hugs,” Quinn said. “We’re stuck in between a long waiting list of any shelter or longer-term placement. So it’s been tough.”
Unhoused advocates say the wait time for families trying to get shelter has increased substantially recently. While the Family Housing Hub didn’t respond to our inquiry and questions, advocates say they’ve been told that there are more than 200 families on the waitlist, with an average wait time of at least three months.
The Family Housing Hub’s eligibility requirements have also come as a surprise to some. Recent applicants have been told they are not considered unhoused if they are temporarily living in a hotel room, or even in their car, and thus have been removed from the waitlist.
“Because the Family Housing Hub has refused to adjust its model, and because the state has refused to even acknowledge that family homelessness is a crisis right now in Arizona, we began to post daily, often multiple times a day, about families on the streets in need of emergency help, in an effort to mass organize the community to shelter families one night at a time,” Davis said.
Fifty-three-year-old Yoleaisa Carwell has been unhoused with her two sons since April 2025, when they were evicted. Still, she said she has continued working for Allied Security — though she hasn’t been able to work as much since she was hit by a car in December. While she tried to go through the Family Housing Hub, she said that she was removed from the waitlist because her youngest son, at 17, was too old to qualify the family for the program.
The Family Housing Hub’s website says it assists families with children under 18, but its staff did not respond to an inquiry about whether that information is outdated, as are several other details on its website about wait time data.
After connecting with AZ Hugs, Carwell and her sons were able to get a roof over their heads on certain nights — but not everyday.
“We would sleep outside in places not habitable for living — abandoned apartments, places that were being remodeled or a storage unit we rented. But when the manager of the facility found out, he kicked us out and threw out all of our belongings. We lost everything, including my mom’s ashes,” Carwell told us. “I would suggest to anyone in the world not to come to Arizona because the resources are very, very limited.”
And for lots of working poor people and families, the economic belt is tightening.
Fuel prices and inflation are climbing to recent highs due to America and Israel’s war with Iran, which compounds the cuts and austerity changes to key welfare programs, like SNAP.
As we’ve previously noted, Arizona has been particularly aggressive in enacting those SNAP cuts, resulting in a huge decrease of families benefitting from food stamps; state data shows that 200,000 children have lost benefits.
On Monday, NBC News reported on the growing and huge crowd of Arizonans who have lost their benefits, are going hungry and having to rely on food banks — single moms, elderly citizens, people in addiction recovery programs. Many of them believed they shouldn’t have lost their benefits.
These economic conditions and federal changes are causing the faces of people slipping into homelessness to become more varied, and it’s rendering the stereotype of mental health or substance abuse challenges increasingly outdated.
With the summer just starting, Davis said some of the children from families have already been hospitalized for heat-related illnesses.
“The Family Housing Hub worked when there were dramatically less families facing housing insecurity. But as record numbers of households have been evicted or displaced, this system has become increasingly backed up,” Davis said. “This current reality presents us with a fundamental problem. Where do families go to stay safe during the two to three months before shelter becomes available for them?”
He’s calling on Gov. Katie Hobbs to declare a state of emergency on family homelessness, and he has a few policy suggestions: allocate more funds toward expanding shelters, create a motel voucher program and open a 24/7 family respite center so the newly unhoused have a safe option to turn to for their first night on the street.
We asked Hobbs’ office whether they’re keeping a finger on the pulse of family homelessness — or whether they would consider instituting a state of emergency if things got bad enough — but haven’t received a response.
But with inflation climbing higher and the economy getting worse for the working and the poor, this problem seems likely to get worse before it gets any better.
DINO-sore spot: The state Senate’s Director Nominations Committee was back in action this week, this time with Republican senators grilling Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ nominee to lead the Arizona National Guard for hours, KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez reports. Republican Sens. Wendy Rogers and Jake Hoffman accused John Conley of being “quibblistic” and “lawyerly” as Conley fielded questions about the U.S. war on Iran, vaccine mandates in the military and whether the National Guard should support ICE. The committee ended up advancing Hobbs’ nomination, but only after Senate Democrats objected to the contentious lines of the questioning, per the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers.
“There’s a difference between vetting and being disrespectful jerks, and they were disrespectful jerks,” Sen. Analise Ortiz said.
Nobody reads the Constitution, continued: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is gearing up to file a lawsuit to remove Navajo County Recorder David Marshall, per KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky. The state Constitution doesn’t allow elected officials to hold another office during the term they were elected to serve in the first office, Mayes argued in an April 24 letter KJZZ obtained through a records request. As a former lawmaker whose term doesn’t end until January, Marshall doesn’t qualify to serve as county recorder, Mayes says.
Is age just a number?: A bevy of young candidates are vying for elected office in Arizona this year, including 16 candidates who are 30 years old or younger, Jordan Gerard reports for the Capitol Times. In case you were wondering, that’s a lot younger than the average senator (58 years old) or state representative (51 years old). Danielle Skranak, a 30-year-old Republican candidate for the state House, says the older crowd doesn’t notice some of the big issues faced by the younger generation.
“I am paying a significant amount more in rents that the older legislators are just not aware of. They’re more established in their career. They have higher pay. Maybe they’re retired already,” Skranak said.
A lot at stake: The deadline to renew the free trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada is coming up in less than two months, and Arizona officials and business owners are pushing to make sure it doesn’t expire, the Republic’s Clara Migoya and Rey Covarrubias Jr report. Hobbs backed the trade agreement at a roundtable last week that was heavy on agriculture, including dairy farmers who send two-thirds of their exports to Mexico and produce companies that export $32 billion worth of fruits and vegetables to Mexico and Canada every year.
Not-so-big Brother: Taking a cue from other cities that dealt with an onslaught of ICE agents last year and this spring, City of Phoenix officials created a portal for residents to file complaints against ICE agents, along with photos, videos or other documentation, per 12News. Those complaints will then be shared with local police and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
Early voting for Arizona’s primary elections starts June 24, but before then, you’ll have several chances to hear from the candidates asking for your vote.
The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission debates are underway, and the Agenda team is moderating this year’s legislative debates.
The debates kick off at 6 p.m. and will be livestreamed on the commission’s YouTube page.
Here’s the debates on tap this week:
Wednesday, May 13
Democrats Brett Newby, a behavioral health analyst and associate professor, and Teresa Leyba Ruiz, a former educator who has served on several nonprofit boards, will present their vision for Arizona’s education system as they try to take the office back from Republicans.
In what’s turning out to be among the most contentious Democratic primaries south of the Gila River, Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez is attempting to move up to the state Senate after eight years in the House. But first, she’ll have to fend off a challenge from former Tucson City Council member Rocque Perez.
Meanwhile, four Democrats are fighting for the nomination to two House seats in this deep-blue Tucson district. Democratic Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales is running as a team with teacher Genoveva Diaz, while Democratic Rep. Betty Villegas is attempting to hang on to her seat as teacher Ben Koehler joins the fray.
Thursday, May 14
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne will attempt to fend off a challenge from State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, who is challenging Horne from the right on a platform that he’s not supportive enough of the state’s universal school voucher program.
Four Republicans are vying for two open seats in the House in this conservative Scottsdale-based district. There’s also a contested GOP Senate primary as longtime GOP Sen. John Kavanagh is attempting to fend off a challenge from Republican Robert Wallace, who works for Turning Point Action and runs a podcast about spiritual and metaphysical issues, including lizard people.
You can view the full debate schedule here.
And here’s a nifty Google Calendar that you can subscribe to for all the debates this election season.1
If there was a Territorial Cup for commencement speakers, ASU would’ve beaten the UA by a mile.
ASU got freakin’ Han Solo to speak, while the UA ended up with some tech guy.
You can almost hear Harrison Ford’s sincere, raspy voice as he told ASU students on Monday to “stand up for someone who can’t stand up for themselves; bring people together who weren’t talking before. That’s leadership. That’s what moves the needle.”
UA students, meanwhile, are going to hear from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Friday. Student groups have already been rallying to cancel the billionaire as their speaker over sexual assault and harassment allegations against him and the fact that he’s mentioned in the Epstein files.
1 Shout-out to reader Bill for suggesting that we create a Google Calendar of this year’s debate schedule