For the Silverado Express Newspaper
While locally we have shortages of office, light manufacturing, and other business-related spaces, available housing has been lacking at crisis levels. “We’re in a crisis right now and we need to find a way out of it,” Spokane County Commissioner Josh Kerns told KXLY news back in August of this 2021. “The average family in this community can’t afford the average house in this community.”
And that’s not just in Spokane; housing prices have skyrocketed all over the State of Washington. The state’s “runaway champ” however, according to Dan Bertolet of Sightline.org, is Spokane, “where from 2017 to 2021, home values rose by 81 percent, and rents by 52 percent.”
The solution – to build more homes – sounds like it would be simple, but it’s not. Zoning laws and the State of Washington’s Growth Management Act (GMA) throw a monkey wrench into the equation. Read More