Looked up Grand Rapids data today for a random reply. I’m just feeling utterly stupified today about what this country is doing to itself. Here, you can see construction of single-family and multi-family homes in Grand Rapids, real prices of homes in 2 ZIP codes in Grand Rapids since 2000 and the median real rent in Grand Rapids since 2015 (all deflated with nominal income).

So, we made it really hard for a lot of families in Grand Rapids to buy new single-family homes in order to end a housing bubble that ABSOLUTELY, TO ANY DEGREE WHATSOEVER did NOT happen in Grand Rapids. AT ALL. We still enforce that change.

Meanwhile, locals could get away with blocking apartments when families were able to build single-family homes on the edge of town. And now that they can’t easily do that, locals in Grand Rapids continue to show up, like residents in every city do, and demand that permission not be given to build new proposed apartments.

The result: rents inflating 20% since 2015 in the “affordable” part of the country.

This country deserves to be called names. Bad names. So many Americans don’t deserve the benefits of our birthright that remain legal and available.

And while everyone imposes this on themselves, I have to spend half my professional life debating with 6 different types of dumb-ass know-nothingness about whether anything could be wrong at all in Grand Rapids.

It’s just all so obvious, so stress-inducing, so culturally and economically toxic. And, the solutions are so practically easy. Every city and level of government has, at some point in its past - in many cases the not-so-distant past - done the things that would solve this. And the country just collectively has its head so far up its ass that it’s a political hot potato to do any of it.