Anybody listening for five minutes likely knows how little I enjoy talking about housing, in particular affordable housing. The way the Grand Forks addresses the issue is haphazard and ill-thought out, looking for answers without actually defining the problem. I am all for addressing issues, but let’s do it in a meaningful, carefully thought out way. Let’s understand the problem before we decide on a solution.

This post from Justin Fox in Bloomberg View is one of the better thought out pieces on the issue of housing affordability. It offers up further resources for reading and does a decent job of addressing some of the basic measurement issues. I think there are other ways Grand Forks would need to proceed with measurement given the particulars of the local economy when compared to a coastal city approach. That said, it would be an important thing for anybody wanting to discuss the issue to read.

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