Fun fact: home prices in Rhode Island fell about 25% between 2008 and 2013. And that was the result of a historic recession caused by massive failures in the banking and lending industry, coupled with an extreme subprime mortgage crisis.

You’re not gonna get the banks failing this time. There is no subprime mortgage crisis. What we have is a lot of demand and not very much supply, because as much as everybody talks a big game about lowering housing prices, nobody wants a bunch of duplexes or triplexes or townhomes or condos built in their own neighborhood.

So everybody is fighting over the same houses, many of which were literally built 100 years ago, because no matter what anybody tells you, the people in this state value living in a museum more than they care about making housing more affordable.