Housing is a positional good. The price is not about labor and materials, but about winning against the others who want the same house. Accordingly, housing prices respond to changes in the money/wealth available to pay them, finding whatever price level is necessary to match the number of households that can afford a unit to the number of available units. Increasing wealth across the board does not make more homes unless you also permit their construction.
Housing is not really a positional good. As a counterpoint, consider the extremes. If a market is saturated, the value of a house remains non-zero. If there is only a single house in an area, the value probably remains low since there is nothing else of value around it. Housing just more or less just follows a normal supply curve. Building more housing isn't going to cause the overall price to approach zero.
As a side note, with a healthy housing market a house would probably be a depreciating asset, like a car. This would have the side-effect of making those who put a lot of money into their home unhappy, and so homeowners have put a lot of effort into ensuring artificial restrictions leave the housing market in an unhealthy state that lines their pockets.
Getting affordable housing is possible, but it requires fighting the extremely entrenched mentality that a home is a form of savings that should always go up in value.
Poke around the Northwest Side of Milwaukee, vastly oversupplied for its current population and economic stature. I see a 5-bedroom apartment for $46k [0]. Sure it's not $0, but it's damn close as housing goes. (Note that this area is not particularly dense, just poor. But Tokyo shows us that we can also have rich areas dense enough to be affordable).
As someone who owns a lot of houses, well the mentality that the house is the storehouse of value is not the only thing.
My family does not want to live where anyone can buy up a house. Yes, everyone likes less problems. But your ability to reduce problems depends on the resources you've available.
We want to live in the places where there are plenty of facilities, people rougly having same income level.
It's way easier to join and relate to the people who are at same level as you.
Housing cost is the best way to ensure these emotional aspects.
>It's way easier to join and relate to the people who are at same level as you.
This is a fine reason to want stable housing prices, but when the median resident bought their house for $200k 10 years ago, and the new neighbors are paying $2 million, you're also seeing a huge change in income level and all the cultural baggage that comes with it.
