(upbeat music) (Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, an evidence-based approach to the housing crisis is flipping the script.

(Justin) Are you all working with MDOT for housing out here?

(Brandi) And that is our job here in Housing First.

It's about building that trust and outreach.

(Tom) The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix is trying to preserve our environment.

(Kimberlie) People come here, a lot of them come here when they first moved to Phoenix to see, oh, what could I have or what kind of plants will work?

(Tom) And an experimental series challenges the very notion of what music is.

(Zack) Music like this is a lot of times you're in your room and you're making it by yourself and no one will ever hear it and no one will see you perform.

And there's not a lot of places that will let you do this.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

Did you know that Arizona's unsheltered population has increased significantly over the last seven years?

Well, we came here today to Rio Vista Natural Resources Park in Tucson.

We found evidence of that.

You'll see it right here behind me.

And yet in those same seven years, the number of shelter beds has decreased.

Well, the city of Tucson is approaching the issue of homelessness with a housing first initiative.

In the next part of our series, "Where to Live," we see how this evidence-based approach is flipping the script by providing unsheltered individuals and families housing, then providing the support they need.

[MUSIC] (Keith) The level of housing insecurity that we have now is extraordinarily elevated.

(Keith) The pandemic put increased pressure on our rental market because as home prices spiked, people moved into the rental market and thus further crowded out accessible and affordable markets.

So all of that drove a 35 to 40% increase in rents over a three year period between 2020 and 2023, incomes have not increased anywhere near that much.

So that has put an enormous strain on particularly lower income households.

I'm Keith Bentele, I'm an associate research professor at the University of Arizona.

I've focused mostly on housing insecurity and homelessness.

I've worked on a lot of evaluations of local homeless service programs.

Support from the federal government through the stimulus payments and child tax credits.

That's kind of fallen away.

Credit card debt has been spiking over the last year.

People are managing to make their rent.

And now you have a lot of people who are just hanging on.

This has led to a very dramatic increase in homelessness in our community.

(Katie) I'm Katie Ratlief I'm the Executive Director of the Common Sense Institute, Arizona.

And we look at the fiscal and economic impact of local and state policies all across the state.

(Katie) Homelessness is one of the the biggest humanitarian and public health crisis that state and local leaders face.

Something seems to have changed around 2017 and the population stops declining.

It begins to increase.

Around 2020, it begins to increase very rapidly and the number of shelter beds continues to decrease over time.

There was a policy shift about 20 years ago where the federal government and even state and local policymakers determined that investing in what's called permanent supportive housing or housing first was the right policy approach.

(Brandi) I'm Brandi Champion, Housing First Program Director for the city of Tucson.

The Housing First program is an evidence-based practice where people experiencing homelessness have immediate access to housing.

I've worked where there is prerequisite to housing you've got to, you know, submit a urinalysis and you've got to meet a certain criteria and you have to be working so long and you have to save so much money in order to get into housing.

This flips it on its head because how can you do any of those things when you don't have a starting place?

(Keith) Housing First as an approach is highly researched at this point is it is identified through empirical evidence as a very effective strategy for helping people exit, especially unsheltered homelessness.

And that is because it says we need to treat the whole person and we need to get people stabilized in their housing before we try to address all these other issues that people might be dealing with.

(Brandi) Housing is the ultimate I believe it's a basic human right.

(Katie) Housing First works if the root cause is a lack of housing.

It also can work if you have a culture of accountability that is really focused on addressing the root cause even after someone has achieved housing.

(Brandi) I want to be clear that Housing First doesn't necessarily work for everybody.

Everybody has a different journey.

You know, we deal with people that are unsheltered, experiencing substance use, mental health crisis, people that are justice involved, people that have many barriers to getting in and maintaining their housing.

(Justin) Today I'm coming down Aviation Parkway.

I want to go down through here and just reiterate and see if there's any case manager connections that need to be made.

(Justin) Hey, City of Tucson.

Anybody home?

Hey, bud.

Do you need any connection?

Are you and connected with MDOT and housing out here?

When you're making like, a contact with, like, the encampment, I mean, the very first thing you want to ask them is, what can I do for you?

I mean, you got to meet these people right where they're at.

You didn't get on with the MDOT program with the housing?

That's all right.

It's not out of the question.

I mean, we can do it solo.

(Client) I was there.

at the same spot he was at.

(Justin) Sometimes it's just you know, that guy might need a bus ticket home or he may just need food today.

I mean, so having us as being that that first initial contact is I think it's very vital to the community.

(Brandi) It's a really vigorous process to do those.

People have to be willing to engage.

Sometimes people tell you to get lost, you know, until they keep seeing you.

I'm going to just check these folks over here real quick.

What's up, man?

How are you?

Are you working with MDOT for housing out here?

(Brandi) And that is our job here in Housing First, it's about building that trust and outreach with our outreach services and then connecting them to a navigator that can navigate them through the process of getting into a house and then connecting them to a case manager that can case manage them when they're in that house.

I got some water.

You guys need some bottled water at least.

You guys good?

Perfect, man.

All right, Stay safe.

(Katie) The overall outcomes at the state and at the county level in both Maricopa and Pima are don't seem to be getting better.

And so I think that that's kind of the intent of the report, is to really put this in context and ask ourselves as a state, are we, are we doing the best that we can?

What we found is the rate of unsheltered individuals around the state is about 50%.

But in Pima County, Pima County is an outlier.

It's closer to 70%.

And then finally, the total dollar amount that's being spent is about $1,000,000,000 statewide.

Most of that is attributable to Maricopa County.

That's where most of the population is.

But about 100 million 100 to 150 million of that is directly attributable to Pima County and Southern Arizona.

(Keith) The volume of resources that our homeless service providers have, all of that funding is very small.

Relative to the volume of people who are flowing into and remaining homeless.

(Brandi) We're not resource heavy.

I think a lot of times people want to blame the city of Tucson or Pima County or what have you, but I think it's because we don't have the resources to carry the load.

I think with the money that this division gets, we're being pretty effective compared to the expense of emergency room visits, incarceration and what have you.

(Keith) If you don't want to be spending so much money on mitigating the consequences of an affordable housing shortage, why don't we focus on the root cause and spend that money on the affordable housing?

That would obviate a lot of the need for these services.

(Katie) We really want to challenge policymakers to think about, you know, are our policies the most compassionate that they could be?

(Brandi) People think homelessness is just the guy at the bus stop smoking fentanyl.

And it is not.

It is not Those people up in encampments and experiencing homelessness and in their addiction are my peers.

They are my peers.

I can relate to them.

I know what they're going through.

They're on a treadmill.

They can't get off.

And a lot of people are like, well, foo foo.

They, they can just get off.

It is not that easy.

No one is disposable.

Every human being brings something to the table.

When we opened Wildcat, we opened that in February of 2022.

We've served quite a bit of people there.

We actually cleared the Golf Links encampment the first time with that as a pilot.

We're seeing some high numbers of elderly people becoming homeless for the first time in their life.

Developers come in, slap some pain on it, some nice linoleum on the floor and call it 12 to 1500 dollars and you're talking about a person that's got an $800 fixed income, right?

No-tel Motel.

We used that as shelter for a while to give people a place to stay, quite frankly.

While we were looking for housing for them.

And Oracle, that was right next to it where they're developing Milagro.

When we bought No-tel that came with that middle lot and that was the birth of Milagro.

So that's going to be a 63-unit senior living apartment.

Some of those people were housed there, so now they can afford to live.

Thank you Justin.

Yeah, You're welcome man.

Because it feels like you're just kind of sometimes we're just going through the motions and going through the motions, well.

Now, with Housing First, we're done with that.

We're fixing it.

We're not talking about doing outreach.

We're just literally, just meeting people where they're at.

(Brandi) We're not like, oh, there you go.

you're in housing.

We're done.

No, we have an end goal.

We want to see those people become peers for the next guy that's still suffering or still experiencing homelessness.

It is worth it because the cost of just rehousing people who keep falling out of housing is more than the cost of that stabilization.

(Brandi) So I think that's what it's about, understanding that one agency or government agency or what have you is not the solve-all, end-all for homelessness.

We've got to do it as a community.

[MUSIC] (Tom) Now we take you to Phoenix, where since 1939, Desert Botanical Gardens has been a global leader in the research and conservation of desert plants and animals.

They're doing important work that helps us to understand and conserve this desert that we all love so much.

And it's a pretty nice place to stroll around and enjoy.

♪ Melodic strings playing (Kimberlie) This garden is really somewhat unique amongst all the gardens in the United States in that it was founded on the premise of conservation.

Our founders were looking around Phoenix, which was 50,000 people at the time, and saying, "Oh my gosh, the city is exploding, development is just going wild, and we're losing the desert."

And they were lovers of desert plants, and they were trying to figure out, what can we do to prevent the loss of these plants?

♪ Melodic strings ♪ Conservation is in our DNA.

We have stayed true to that mission for the entirety of our 85 years.

We are not an institution that's doing work, science, research, etc.

and then trying to hide it under a barrel.

We're trying to disseminate and share that knowledge for the betterment of everyone.

We want to inspire people to understand and love desert plants the way we do.

♪ Melodic strings ♪ Staff of this garden wrote what's considered the bible for the cactus family.

Also, what's considered to be the bible for agaves of continental North America.

There was a book published on peyote, which you can imagine in certain circles, it's a really popular book.

It's a constant, continual effort that we have to learn and then share what we're discovering.

♪ Melodic strings ♪ (Laura) I'm Laura Spalding Best and I am senior director of exhibits here at Desert Botanical Garden.

The exhibit encompasses temporary art exhibitions, which we're really known for.

♪ Melodic strings ♪ (Laura) Exhibits also here is our thematic trails.

So you could explore the plants and people of the Sonoran Desert Trail.

You can see how plants are used to build shelters, how they're used for food, medicine, decorative art.

(Laura) We have the Center for Desert Living Trail, which kind of talks to you about having a water-wise garden, showing examples of how you can have plants at home in the desert.

One of our super popular exhibits is the butterfly exhibit, which we have every fall and spring, and it showcases butterflies that are native to the region.

♪ Melodic strings, percussion (Laura) And we have a living collection of 50,000 desert plants.

So we are really a living, breathing museum.

♪ Melodic strings, percussion [Drawer opening, rustling] (Wendy) My name is Wendy Hodson, and I am herbarium curator emerita.

And I started working here at the garden back in 1974.

And I've been here 50 years.

I like to tell people I started when I was five, but most of them don't believe that.

I was given a proclamation, I have my own day, February 14th.

I became very interested in collecting plants, figuring out what plants grow where, and so it was sort of a natural move to get into herbarium work.

Historically, a herbarium goes back to the 1500s.

When Luca Ghini, who was Italian medical doctor, botanist, he had this great idea of drawing and flattening plant specimens and gluing them on paper or cardboard.

And specimens still exist.

We have about 100,000 specimens in these files in these cases.

This one right here is a little fleabane daisy that I collected back in 1993.

And I called it one species, but a specialist working on fleabanes said, "Nope, that's new."

And I had the good fortune of having it named after me.

So I always like to tell people it's the prettiest little plant there is.

It's "Erigeron hodgsoniae".

The Sonoran Desert is the fifth most threatened biome in the country.

And so it's really important to collect and understand plant ecology, plant communities in this region.

(Kimberlie) Over half of all the plants we have here are cactus.

And that's super important, more important than anyone could have really realized over the years as we were building that collection, because in 2015 it was determined by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature that the cactus family is one of the most threatened groups of organisms on the planet.

(Kimberlie) People want to bring what they're familiar with to wherever they go.

When people were coming to Phoenix, people brought lawns, roses.

There was actually a concerted campaign that was called "Eradicate the Desert."

That's where this garden started, is having that atmosphere saying, "All of that desert stuff, worthless."

(Kimberlie) More and more home landscapes are converting from the green turf and the other non-native plants to desert plants.

And we try to support that as much as we can by being a showcase here at the garden.

People come here, a lot of them come here when they first moved to Phoenix to see, "Oh, what could I have here?

What kind of plants will work?"

♪ Upbeat music ♪ (Kimberlie) We like to think that we have played a significant role in helping to sort of shift the mindset of many people here to understand that desert plants are beautiful and they are extraordinary to have both in the wild spaces around Phoenix and also in people's home landscapes.

♪ Upbeat music ♪ [Bird calling, voices] (Tom) Experimental and ambient music are genres that have been around for more than half a century with pioneers like Brian Eno.

Now local and national avant-garde artists are creating works on the fringes of the music and art world, but perform here in Tucson, helping to push the boundaries of what music can be.

[ ♪ DESERT BREATH ] My name is Zack Hansen.

I am the founder, curator, and promoter of Desert Drone.

Desert Drone is an ongoing series to promote experimental music in Tucson.

It features ambient music, drone music, noise music.

Drone music can be musical, it can be non-musical, it can be guitars, it can be piano.

I think about being in the elevator, but make it cool.

You can think back to Brian Eno, the founder of Ambient Music.

[MUSIC] It can be harsh, we have kind of more metallic, like more metal-based drone acts that come in, striking one chord, and letting that hang for a couple of minutes, and then moving on to the next chord.

[ ♪ GRAYSON PLAYING BUILT TO SPILL ♪ ] Music like this is a lot of times you're in your room, and you're making it by yourself, and no one will ever hear it and no one will see you perform.

And there's not a lot of places that will let you do this.

So when I was younger, we started a post-rock band.

We were influenced by Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and instrumental bands at the time.

And we really wanted to score a movie.

And that kind of led to a natural progression to finding more experimental ambient artists and artists like that who are taking the genre to new levels.

And that was kind of what started me on that path.

People move to Tucson and they're like, I'll have five bands and we'll play once a year.

But I love that.

They don't have a ton of ambition.

I feel like I have to drag a lot of people out of their house to come play.

And that's kind of the fun too.

It's like play your one show a year with me because everybody will come out and everybody will see you and it will remind you, hey, maybe you should put some music out.

Maybe you should record.

(Performer) I think we got a healthy little, healthy little conglomeration in here, but it's good to see.

[ ♪ HARMONICA NOTE ] I've known how to work a tape recorder since my mom taught me how when I was four.

[ ♪ HARMONICA NOTE ] [ ♪ SOUND OF REPEATING DRONE ] Sean is an AJJ, who is such a long time band from Arizona.

They've been playing for over 20 years.

They're still touring.

The decision for me to play Desert Drone tonight was not one that's really tied to the ambition that I have for my band or anything.

More like kind of seeking out some purity to the art.

Looking to kind of be a part of a greater community of people that are interested in making strange sounds too.

I think you call it experimental music because it's the act of experimenting.

So you don't really need to come in with too much of a plan or a composition.

You just kind of get up there, set up your stuff and then kind of troubleshoot your way through a performance.

[ LAUGHS ] [ VOICE DISTORTION ] May I borrow your voice?

Alright There's definitely a jazz influence to a lot of the music in this scene.

Purists would definitely disagree, I'm sure.

Part of me is using it as an exploratory thing.

try to mine whatever cool techniques I can and then learn how to control them later.

I like performing in front of people, whether it's like, juggling or singing or twiddling knobs.

I like to look out and see how people react.

[ SOUND OF CLARINETS ] (Zack) I think that's what has made Desert Drone succeed.

You know, you could go to this in LA, you could go to this in Portland, and I don't think you'll see the same method.

Like, you won't see the founder behind a merch table selling t-shirts.

I saw something recently where it was like, kids don't hang out anymore.

And I think it's because they don't have anywhere to hang out.

And I think providing a place for culture and for music and for kids to come together is essential, where they can see that things are better.

If they come to one of these shows, Ithey'll see people in their 20s and their 30s and their 40s, and they'll know, like, okay, that's really cool.

It doesn't suck getting old, you know?

Like, people can still be weird.

People can still have weird art, and you're not going to be judged for it.

And there's going to be a community surrounding you that will embrace you and your ambition to be weird.

You have to let art still breed.

You know, I'm always worried about each show.

Not necessarily being afraid of failure, but being afraid of not having a platform for everybody else.

I can be frantic, I can be running around everywhere, but when the show starts and I see a happy, content audience and you know, sitting in their seats and so that really like calms me down and tells me that everything's gonna be alright until the next show.

[ LAUGHS ] (Tom) Next, we step into the vibrant world of southwestern art at the Tucson Museum of Art.

Now, this exhibition is not simply about beauty.

It's an earnest conversation curated with input from the community about issues that speak to our hearts here in southern Arizona.

[MUSIC] (Christine) This exhibition, Southwest Art Contemporary Conversations, really stems from the idea of trying to figure out what is Southwest Art.

What is the Southwest?

How is it defined geographically?

And then if you can define that, how do you define the artwork that is derived about that region?

We had a cohort of seven community curators come together and help us really figure out how to decide which direction we could take.

If you think about Tucson and southern Arizona, you think about all the different people that live in our region, that it's not just one type of background or one type of culture.

There are so many and they overlap one another a lot of the time as well.

So we asked people from the community to author some texts.

We had people who came from different backgrounds who authored different content for us.

You can have a concept of land, which talks about not just landscape art, but how urban or rural works talk about how we utilize the land.

We have perspectives that aren't only about, you know, one person or a group of people, but how they perceive the Southwest.

Artists are kind of products of their time, right?

They're looking at different issues that maybe were occurring at the time that their work was being created.

Maybe they were influenced by certain artistic movements or things like that.

So there's a variety of that in this show where you kind of have to piece together maybe what those artists were thinking, what they were considering when they put artwork together.

So for example, you know, we have this piece here that was put together in the 1940s at a time where there were lots of ranches and open land in southern Arizona that, you know, people could explore.

And so, you know, what was that artist thinking when he created that?

And so we have next to it a piece that also has saguaros just like that Dale Nichols.

And it's a completely different viewpoint.

So it really makes you think about the context behind each piece.

That's one of the ideas that we hope to have visitors explore when they come through our gallery.

(Tom) Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.