That’s great for you, Matt.

Unfortunately for many others across the entire country, housing affordability is a real crisis. It’s not just limited to Palo Alto or California or Seattle or Blue State, USA.

Last summer the Urban Institute issued a report where the central finding is that no county in the U.S. has enough affordable rental units to meet its need. Not one. (In the report “affordability” is defined as housing costs consuming less than one-third of a family’s total household income, which is a pretty standard definition.) And unless I’m mistaken and you live in the USA, that means the same thing for your county too.

Here’s more evidence. There was a national research poll done earlier this year released as “How Housing Matters” by Hart Research for the MacArthur Foundation/The Kresge Foundation/Melville Charitable Trust. One of the key findings was:

“A majority of adults say that housing affordability is at least somewhat of a problem in their own community and roughly six in 10 say it is challenging to find affordable housing to buy (60%) and to rent (57%) in their own community.”

To reiterate, these trends are not specific to Palo Alto or California. They are happening “outside of California” too.

One of the best-selling books right now is Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted” which follows the stories of multiple families in Milwaukee, WI, losing their homes and them navigating “the system.” No matter how well-written a book is regarding unsexy topics like eviction, foreclosure and homelessness, it doesn’t get to be a best-seller unless a LOT of people identify with that type of misery. And many are…