Housing

Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams -  When my dad bought his home in the 1950s, for example, the median price of a single-family house was around 2.2 times the median American family income. Today the St. Louis Fed says the median house sells for $417,700 while the median American income is $40,480—a ratio of more than 10 to 1 between housing costs and annual income. In other words, housing is about five times more expensive (relative to income) than it was in the 1950s.

Your editor was recently thinking about the best housing systems he had lived in and quickly came up with the late 19th century, early 20th century townhouses near the US Capitol. His first apartment in DC was the third floor of a house  joined to others in the block and near various services such as the cafe one block away and a cleaners a few blocks further. So he was pleased to come across this article.  

Amanda Shendruk and Heather Long, Washington Post -  Owning a home has long been a core part of the American Dream. Today, however, there simply aren’t enough affordable options, and that ideal is increasingly out of reach. There’s a sensible way to address this shortfall, but it requires moving beyond the antiquated vision of a big house with a fenced yard in the suburbs.

The new American Dream should be a townhouse — a two- or three-story home that shares walls with a neighbor. Townhouses are the Goldilocks option between single-family homes in the suburbs and high-rise condos in cities. ...

Single-family homes account for most of the houses owned in the United States. They typically have large yards and are considered low density. ... The United States needs more homes — 3 million to 7 million, depending which expert you ask. In many parts of the world, the obvious solution would be to construct high-rises; however, financing and liability challenges for U.S. developers have meant almost no new condo construction since 2009.