It Started With a Number I Couldn't Ignore
Bellingham, Washington has an 8.8:1 price-to-income ratio — the highest among comparable cities in the state, and more than double what it was in 1998. A down payment that cost $33,000 a generation ago now runs $140,000. At a 10% savings rate, that's nearly nine years of saving before you can even get to the table.
That's not a market failure. That's a policy outcome.
When I started digging into how we got here — through Washington's Growth Management Act, local land use decisions, and a planning system that concentrates control in the hands of a small group of decision-makers — I realized this story wasn't being told clearly anywhere. The explanations offered by officials ("supply and demand," "just build more") didn't match the evidence. Housing prices were rising even as population growth slowed. Something else was driving this.
Real Issues exists because people deserve to understand what that something else actually is.
What We Do
Real Issues is part of a broader investigative and education effort under the Real Housing Reform Initiative. Here's how the pieces fit together:
The Real Issues Podcast — In-depth conversations and reporting on housing policy, land use, and local government accountability. We go beyond headlines to explain the systems and decisions shaping your community.
Real Briefings™ — Policy documents are long, dense, and designed to be hard to read. Real Briefings translates them into plain language so residents, journalists, and advocates can actually understand what's being proposed — and what's being buried.
LANDLOCKED By Policy — A deep dive into the specific policies that restrict housing supply, inflate costs, and eliminate pathways to affordable homeownership. Washington's housing crisis isn't an accident of market forces. LANDLOCKED shows exactly how it was engineered.
Investigations — Original reporting on local government accountability, including our ongoing work on Whatcom County land use, the Lake Whatcom Watershed, and the Whatcom County Justice Project.