Family’s struggle to find housing comes to expensive end

Blue Montana and his family just moved into their first apartment in Flagstaff at the beginning of June after arriving in the city in August of 2021.

During their yearlong search for housing in Flagstaff, Montana’s family was turned away from multiple apartments and spent nine months living out of a hotel room.

He had been living in Phoenix for the past year with his husband and child, who is now 5. It wasn’t an especially safe area, Montana said, and their rent was about to go up from $895 to $1,400, so they decided to move to Flagstaff.

“The rent in Phoenix was getting to where we couldn’t afford to live anywhere safe, so we said, ‘If we’re paying $1,700 for a two-bedroom there, we might as well pay $1,700 for a two-bedroom where we want to be — which is up in Flagstaff. … If I’m going to be struggling to pay, I might as well be up here where it’s safe so my kid can at least play outside.”

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Before moving, he had spent about two months searching online and was approved for an apartment that cost around $1,600 per month. It required a “huge” security deposit, however, so he had to look elsewhere.

Montana came to Flagstaff that August and started working at Denny’s and driving for DoorDash while he searched for apartments. Rents were higher than he had expected, he said.

“I knew that two bedrooms was going to run me about $1,600, $1,700 a month, but when I actually started looking around, it was more like two grand a month,” he said. “That was not doable.”

The family was also turned away a few times from potential apartments.

Montana said he had pulled out his phone at a showing to make the security deposit when “it clicked” for the landlord that he and husband were a couple and the offer was pulled. A place in Winslow turned them down because the DoorDash income wasn’t included in their qualifications (“too fluctuating” was the reason given), placing them below the income limit even though they could have “easily” afforded rent.

Some, he said, told them they didn’t allow children or pets (Montana has a service dog) or had a high-income requirement. Another place didn’t respond to two applications, leaving the family out $140 in application fees. They were also approved for a mortgage, but nothing in the area was within their price range.

“It was like one thing after another,” he said.

The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to deny housing opportunities based on sex, including gender identity and sexual orientation. Montana didn’t make a discrimination complaint, however, as he felt that it wouldn’t have any results.

“I’m like, ‘Yeah, I can file a complaint about that, but those are just going to take forever and they’re not really going to go anywhere,'” he said. “It’s just throwing it in the wind and hoping someone will pick it up and take it seriously, but they never really do, so the landlords don’t really have any oversight. “

The high-demand market hadn’t helped either.

“They have such a pool of tenants, they can be as picky as they want. That’s the frustrating part. … If you have one apartment available and you have 30, 40, 50, 60 applicants, you can weed out who you want really easily for any reason you want and not get caught.”

He said he had spent 20 years as a social worker for LGBTQIA+ people, and thought this would only change if there are both policies in place and the local government is dedicated to enforcing them. He gave Nevada’s equal housing commission as an example and said Flagstaff should be “tighter” on both landlords and Airbnbs.

“You can scream and kick and fight all you want, but at the end of the day there’s really nothing you can do unless the state or the city specifically has discrimination laws in place and they hold the landlords accountable,” he said.

After their lease in Phoenix was up in early October 2021, the rest of the family moved to Flagstaff. They rented a room weekly at the Motel 6, where they lived for nine months. Montana worked there, so they got a discount — which was better than the increased rent a renewal on their Phoenix apartment would bring.

Montana kept searching and in May found a lead on Facebook Marketplace. When he originally contacted the person looking for someone to take over their lease on an affordable unit, he was told they had already heard from other applicants. A month later, he got a message saying the other applicants had dropped out and asking if the family was still interested.

“I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ We came over to the office on that Friday, filled out the application, paid the rental fees and moved in,” Montana said.

After almost a year of searching, the family moved into their new apartment in June.

They are paying around $1,600 a month for a two-bed, two-bathroom apartment, including utilities and a pet fee for the service dog. It’s over the recommended third of their combined earnings (both work the front desk at different hotels) after his husband’s recent layoff, but Montana said “we’re going to struggle to make it work, because we can’t continue to live in a hotel.”



Blue Montana poses with his husband and child. The family moved from Phoenix in October and spent nine months living in a hotel before finding an apartment in Flagstaff.


Courtesy

“All in all, I love Flagstaff,” he said. “I’m a little sour about the whole housing situation, but that’s — again, there’s little oversight.”

The family’s plan is to stay in the city, but the recent Supreme Court decision has worried them about LGBTQIA+ rights.

While Flagstaff is “very inclusive” Montana said, Arizona’s still a red state, so if national law changes, the family will likely move. They want to stay in the city, however.

“If they go after gay marriage, then I’m not going to have my marriage attacked. Then I’ll go to California, but that will probably be the only one [reason]. Other than that, we plan on staying in Flagstaff; we love it here,” he said.

Montana’s advice for people looking for a home in Flagstaff was to “stay diligent.”

“Just keep looking, looking, looking,” he said. “That’s really all you can do. Start looking before you move.”

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