The Hood River City Council and County Commission held a joint meeting to discuss housing and annexation issues, and it served to underline how many barriers there are to creating more housing opportunities of various kinds.  While much of the talk centered on whether annexation of large amounts of the urban growth area at the various steps the governmental bodies could take to stimulate housing development, City Planner Dustin Nilsen pointed out they have been processing a number of multi-family housing applications, but they stall out because of economic realities.  County and City officials plan to have a strategic annexation discussion.  They also talked about work on updates to the urban growth management agreement, but staff capacity and fiscal limitations mean in might be another budget cycle before that can happen.  The two bodies also planned to get together again in about three months, once staff has information to add to the discussion.