Housing in Spokane: not enough, too expensive. What are the fixes?

Washington doesn’t have enough housing, so say some of the state’s most influential people, including Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck.

"The housing shortage obviously causes, by definition, cutthroat competition, and price increases, rapid price increases, follow as surely as night follows day," he said at a recent forum on housing sponsored by Greater Spokane.

"We can't grow our economy because we don't have enough houses. Simple fact of the matter. Businesses cannot expand. Businesses cannot locate here if they cannot find shelter for their employees. The housing shortage actually causes a bunch of problems that aren't intuitively obvious at all and that don't always leap off the page at you, but they are problems caused by the shortage nonetheless."

People who can't afford to buy hous