Americans just keep finding new housing markets to price themselves out of

2022-02-24T08:20:00-05:00

No matter how many times it happens, no matter how many cities and states try to blunt it with recommendations to build more housing and provide subsidies for those who can’t afford the new stuff, no matter how many zoning battles are fought or homeless camps lamented, no next city, as of yet, seems better prepared than the last one was.

Like other small cities such as Reno, Nevada and Austin, Texas that have followed San Francisco and New York on a similar path toward a domineering social trend that has come to define the way we live and work in the unfurling decades of the 21st century. Americans on both coasts have been cycling through skyrocketing housing markets since the end of the Recession, with states like Texas and Florida seeing an incredible influx of out-of-state residents in the last two years alone.

One assessment says Spokane underbult a total of about 32,000 affordable units in the 2010s, leading to a median home value that has risen some 60% since the beginning of the pandemic. The jump has caused a near-zero availability rental market and concern for SP director of community and economic development Steve MacDonald, who himself moved from there Southern California in 2017.

“I’m realizing more and more how important the future prosperity of this city is about getting housing right,” he told the Ti...

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Americans just keep finding new housing markets to price themselves out of