Durin g the housing boom of 2001 through 2006, the prices of single-family homes and condominiums shot up to amazing levels. I remember wondering, once the median sales prices of existing homes raced past the $200,000 mark, how were most people in the United States going to afford a home?

Last week, New Jersey governor Jon Corzine signed into law a requirement that every town in the state provide housing within its own boundaries for residents with low and moderate incomes.

Sometimes a real estate project makes so much sense, it makes you forget all the mortgage-fraud cases, foreclosure-rescue schemes and shady mortgage brokers. So it is with the efforts of an Oakland affordable-housing developer to provide 20 residential units at one of its apartment buildings to teens who have aged out of the foster-care system.

And you thought resort towns were only for the rich. Well, according to an Associated Press story, that’s no longer the case.

Even during the height of the long-gone housing boom, analysts had a concern: Was housing becoming too expensive?