LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — From rising home and rent prices to a lack of available land in the valley to build on, experts tell Channel 13 that more needs to be done to curb the housing crisis in our community.
It needs to be done now.
“We have folks who are suffering from homelessness now that we don’t have the ability to develop things because we don’t have enough land, right people are being put out of their homes as a result of that," said Applied Analysis Principal Analyst Jeremy Aguero.
Aguero took to the stage Thursday during the 44th annual Perspective hosted by the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance.
He hit on four pillars plaguing our community. The first one was the housing crisis in Las Vegas.
“The greatest gap between what we earn and what housing prices are that we’ve ever seen," Aguero said.
Aguero says the median income right now in the Las Vegas Valley is around $70,000, but the income is not rising at the same rate as housing and rent prices.
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That's just one side of the issue.
“We have plus or minus, eight years of developmental land left, what the result, prices going up," Aguero said.
According to the Bureau of Land Management, they own 67% of the land in our state.
This means that as of right now, the land can't be developed unless something changes.
“If there is demand to put that land into productive use, we ought to put it either into the hands of local governments that can put that to public use or into the private sector that’s going to develop that property," Aguero said.
Then, there's also the issue of demand, which is directly related to the significant population growth we've seen here in the valley.
Aguero says for the last 10 years leading up to 2023, Nevada has been in the top five nationally for its population growth.
That decade of growth has had a big impact on more than just housing. It also made access to healthcare more difficult.
“If we look at the number of doctors that we have active physicians per 100,000 population, we rank 45th in the entire United States relative to this. We are 2,450 doctors short," Aguero said.
He says we're nearing the highest growth in healthcare workers across our community and local universities are placing a focus on this field.
He also said it'll take decades to get out of this hole though, saying it took two generations to dig the hole and it will take at least one generation to get out of it.
