I am working on some technical support for my positions regarding housing in Grand Forks but I will take a moment to reiterate that position here. Nobody illustrated to my satisfaction that Grand Forks ever had a housing “crisis.” Could there be circumstances where the types of housing available did not meet the particular demands of the people in the market? Sure. Could it be that builders focused on certain types of building which meant others types did not see new construction? You bet. Does any of this mean the market outcome is bad? No!

Too many people want to talk with me about the “should” side of this and the “equitable” outcome. Markets have nothing to do with equity and economic analysis is a horrible tool for such analysis. If you think the housing price “should” be different because that would be more “fair”, fine. You have a right to think that way, but that is not what the market is doing. The market is trying to make sure consumers and producers jointly maximize their benefit.

This work by Flynnglis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International