10.7% of Maricopa County renter households live without a car

Across the Valley, 5.1% of households have no vehicle, according to Census Bureau survey estimates for 2020 through 2024. The picture changes sharply depending on whether people rent or own.

Among renters, 10.7% of households have no car, van or truck available. Among homeowners, the share is just 2.1%.

That split matters in a metro built around freeways, where summer afternoons are brutally hot. Households without a car are the ones waiting at bus stops, riding light rail, walking, biking or asking for rides.

The timing matters too. Debates over transit funding and light-rail extensions continue around the Valley, and the newest American Community Survey data show how many households depend on something other than a car.

In Maricopa County, the renter share is 8.6 percentage points higher than the owner share. The same pattern shows up in every county the Courier compared: renters are far more likely than owners to go without a vehicle.

In practice, that means a cut to a bus route or a change in a rail schedule reaches a much larger share of renter households than owner households. Renters have the most at stake when service changes.

How the Valley compares with its peers

Among the Sun Belt counties the Courier uses as peers, Maricopa's renter share sits near the bottom. Ordered from highest share to lowest, Maricopa ranks 5th.

Fulton County, home to most of Atlanta, has the highest renter share in the group at 18.5%. Clark County, the Las Vegas area, follows at 14.4%. Clark is a neighboring desert metro facing the same extreme heat, water and housing-growth issues as the Valley.

Harris County, which includes Houston, comes in at 12.9%. Dallas County is at 11.2%, close to Maricopa's figure.

Riverside County in Southern California is the only peer with a lower renter share, at 8.1%. Like much of the Valley, Riverside is a desert-edge region with heavy suburban growth and many logistics jobs.

These are survey estimates, and each carries a margin of error. Small gaps, like the gap between Maricopa and Dallas, should not be read as a firm ranking.

For homeowners, Maricopa's share of 2.1% is the lowest in the group. Harris County is at 2.3% and Dallas County at 2.4%. Clark County sits at 2.6%, Riverside County at 2.6% and Fulton County at 2.9%.

Those owner shares are bunched closely together across the Sun Belt. The bigger differences between counties show up among renters.

Below the state and the nation

The Valley also runs a bit below Arizona as a whole for renters. Statewide, 11.3% of renter households have no vehicle, slightly above the county's share.

The national gap is wider. Across the U.S., 17.9% of renter households and 3.2% of owner households have no vehicle.

The national renter share is 7.2 percentage points higher than Maricopa's. The national owner share is 1.1 percentage points higher.

The survey counts vehicles. It does not record why a household lacks a vehicle, whether the reason is choice, cost, age or disability. The data alone cannot explain why the Valley's carless shares are lower than the nation's.

A lower share also does not mean the issue is small. Even a modest percentage of a county as large as Maricopa represents a great many neighbors who rely on buses, trains, sidewalks and rides from others.

Where the county is looking

Maricopa County already tracks where carless households live. One of its online maps includes a layer estimating the percentage of households in each census tract that do not have a vehicle available (maricopa.gov).

A county map layer also displays Valley Metro light rail and bus stations and stops (maricopa.gov).

Layers like these let planners compare where households without cars live with where transit stops are. That is the kind of detail that county-wide totals cannot show.

The figures in this story cover the whole county, not neighborhoods. They cannot say whether Maryvale, South Phoenix, Laveen, Central City South or any other area has more or fewer carless households than the county average.

What the county-level numbers do show is who has the most riding on transit decisions. Across the Valley and across every peer county, renters are far more likely than owners to live without a car.

What to watch:

• Whether transit funding and light-rail extension decisions draw on tract-level data, like the county's own map, to see where carless households live.
• The next American Community Survey release, which will show whether the Valley's renter share moves up, down or holds steady.
• How Maricopa's renter share tracks against Dallas County and the state, where the current gaps are small and may fall within survey margins.

How we did this

We used Census Bureau American Community Survey estimates for 2020–2024 on vehicles available by housing tenure. We compared the share of owner and renter households with no vehicle in Maricopa County against Dallas, Harris, Clark, Riverside and Fulton counties, Arizona and the U.S. We calculated simple percentage-point differences, such as the 8.6 percentage points renter-owner gap in Maricopa.

No-vehicle household: a household with no car, van or truck available for its members' use. Owner and renter households: households are grouped by whether the people living there own or rent their home. Percentage point: the simple difference between one percentage and another. A move from a lower share to a higher share is measured in percentage points, not percent change. Margin of error: the survey reaches a sample of households rather than all of them, so each estimate could be somewhat higher or lower than the true figure.

Limitations

• These are survey estimates, not a full count, and each figure has a margin of error. Small differences between places may not be meaningful.
• This story does not report margins of error or formal significance tests for the comparisons, so close figures, such as Maricopa's and Dallas County's renter shares, should not be treated as a firm ranking.
• The estimates pool responses collected from 2020 through 2024, so they describe that whole period rather than any particular year.
• The figures are county-wide and cannot show which neighborhoods or ZIP codes have the most households without a vehicle.
• The survey records whether a household has a vehicle, not why. It cannot say whether going without a car reflects personal choice, cost, health or age.

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey: Tenure by Vehicles Available (ACS 5-year 2020–2024), latest period 2024; retrieved Oct. 14, 2026. Data