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The New York Times ran , and it’s not Seattle, it’s not Manhattan, it’s not even Bellevue — it’s Spokane!

The story tells of a family who moved from California to Spokane, and bought a house twice as big as what they had in Los Angeles for half the cost.

That sounds like a great deal. But instead of this being an upbeat story, it lamented about how all these homebuyers invading Spokane are making homes unaffordable, and creating more homelessness as middle-class residents are priced out of the market.

So, of course, Spokane is now looking for ways to get the market under control.

Well, there are ways to tame the housing market — in fact, America did it almost overnight in 2008 when the country slipped into the Great Recession. You throw a lot of people out of work – housing prices drop really fast.

Today, we’re trying to cool down the market by raising interest rates. I have some experience with that – the mortgage rate for the first house I bought in Bellevue in 1980 was 15%. That sure cooled down the market.

The other approach would be to create an even freer market by increasing supply, but that means removing zoning and land use restrictions, and when you propose that, suddenly even housing advocates are saying, “how dare you build more backyards in my backyard!”

I think that if we really believe in a free market economy, we’ll just have to accept that as an area becomes more prosperous, housing prices go up. To get a piece of the action, you have to get that down payment. And if you’re not rich, you’ll have to spend years living below your means, riding the bus, driving the same car until it dies, buying used clothing, making your own coffee – whatever it takes to save that money.

Is it easy? No. Does it take patience? Yes.

Which may be why so many people are chopping up tailpipes instead.

The only other option I can come up with would be to break the cycle of rich people marrying other rich people. We could use income tax data to set up a government-run dating service so that single persons making over $250,000 a year would be required to go on at least one date with a single person making less than $50,000 a year on the chance that a certain percentage will fall in love and be able to afford a decent house.

Problem solved.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.