A Monday potpourri that panders to our friends with short attention spans:

• We’ve complained that affordable housing — seemingly a crisis everywhere — is largely missing from the political discourse. Well, not in Asheville, N.C., where city council candidates are expected to hold forth on what is to be done.

• Starbucks, which offers tuition-assistance to its U.S. employees, offers rental assistance to its workers in the U.K. After a year’s employment, they can get a no-interest loan for a rental deposit.

• The U.K., never short of fresh approaches to chronic social problems, offers this one for the housing affordability shortage: oldsters downsizing to free up their unused extra space for youngsters. Worthy of debate, no?
• Vermont’s recurrent lament that it’s getting too old and can’t hang on to its youth prompts the question: Where are the youth going? Well, here’s one answer, in the form of a list of cities where Millennials are buying homes in large numbers. They’re mostly out west (Des Moines! Grand Rapids!), the same territory where young Vermonters fled during the 1830s. Back then, the people they left behind wrung their hands about that exodus, too.

• Maybe some of the fleeing youth are heading to Dubai, but if they are, they’re encountering – ta-dah! –– an affordable housing shortage, complete with 30-mile commutes from the suburbs.