“with affordable housing a close second”
I know it is relative to a region, but wages have not kept up with house prices when all the Kalifornians and Yanquis move here after selling their houses for a cool half mill to a million they bought for $150K some years ago. Prices are outpacing salary adjustments by a wide margin.
The housing is affordable. The property taxes are the killer. Combined, they are almost as much as our house payment was in the Phoenix area, which we sold for 104K more than our house here in Texas cost.