Affordable housing continues to be an issue for Massachusetts.

At the same time the National Association of Realtors reported that some markets around the country are facing “affordability issues,” Banker & Tradesman columnist Scott Van Voorhis writes in this week’s issue that there is tremendous pressure all around the state to find solutions.

Single-family home prices are still below what they were back in pre-housing crisis 2005, according to data from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, but they are not too far away.

In 2005, the median price of a single-family home hovered around $355,000 in the Bay State. In 2013, the price of a single-family home was $320,000.

If you pair the escalating price of homeownership with rising interest rates and less-than-healthy inventory, homes are truly more expensive than they were even a few months ago.

But beefing up Massachusetts’ housing affordability programs, as reported by Van Voorhis, seems to be a step in the right direction.