Condemned to repeat mistakes of the past: at this point in every real estate cycle, the upward swing of sales and prices,public agencies raise the affordable requirement, and thus choke off housing production, the very thing that sustains affordability, today and tomorrow. For 40 years, housing production has declined and these agencies regulating housing never get blamed by the public for making housing more expensive by making it more scarce. The laws of supply and demand are meaningless when politicians and civil servants get energized by public outcry against high prices and/or NIMBYism. Readers, we have met the enemy of affordable housing and it is us.  The time to produce housing is when the economy is strong, meaning now, but regulation kills it off, and once again public pressure and regulatory activism will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.