The Metropolitan Council provided another of those eyebrow-raising moments recently when it reported that 13,000 people had, in the first few hours of availability, signed up for a chance at 2,000 waiting-list slots for low-income renters — and that the number of applicants had swelled to nearly 36,000 by week's end. It was the council's first lottery in eight years for the federal housing assistance program known as Section 8.

Those figures, which don't include heavy demands on separate housing authorities in Minneapolis, St. Paul and several suburbs, prompt at least three observations:

• Demand for affordable housing continues to overwhelm supply. With more than 20,000 households on waiting lists — and with those lucky enough to get on lists waiting as long as eight years — there remains a crushing need, both for new construction and additional vouchers. That's despite the Twin Cities' relatively high marks on affordability. (As measured against the median household income, Minneapolis-St. Paul ranks in the top third on housing affordability among the nation's 100 largest metro areas.) So, why the persistent need? Fewer federal dollars, for one thing (funding for Section 8 covered 125,000 fewer American households in 2014 than in 2012) and an economy that remains stubbornly bifurcated. "Lower-level incomes are not recovering," said Gretchen Nicholls, program director at the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a leading supplier of subsidized housing.

• Location matters. The University of Minnesota's noted urban analyst Myron Orfield is right to criticize the current practice of locating so much of the metro's subsidized units in neighborhoods that are already poor. Concentrated poverty harms communities, hinders school performance and makes it harder for low-income people to break the poverty cycle. On the other hand, inner-ring cities face a conundrum: surrender to the deterioration and abandonment of older, modest neighborhoods or welcome rehabbed subsidized units. The fact that some residents of affluent suburban and exurban communities will pack gymnasiums and threaten officials with recalls to fight affordable housing — as the Star Tribune reported Monday — further complicates the issue.

• Marriage and job training could do a lot to reduce the demand for affordable housing. According to the Met Council, 74 percent of applicants in the recent lottery were "single female heads of household." Since the 1970s, two incomes have been the key to preserving middle-class lives for millions of American households. It's not impolite to suggest that "domestic teamwork," coupled with job training and two adequate paychecks, could reduce the daunting demand for affordable housing.