Housing, like health care, is a market in which relying on ‘market forces’ is socially inefficient: society’s needs will go unmet. The basic problem is too few suppliers for lower-cost housing. Private builders understandably prefer to build higher-cost housing with higher margins of profit.

Given that housing is a societal issue, lower-cost housing is a market in which government must intervene when that market is failing society. It can do that most effectively by subsidizing the building of lower-cost housing so as to raise, one way or another, the profit margins associated with building such housing (to include encouraging modular forms of construction, etc.).

For a permanent solution on the income side: “For Crying Out Loud, ACCEPT That A SOLUTION Actually EXISTS” (a “2 min read” — including options for further reading — here in Medium). I — to be clear, its author — admit to being a bit frustrated.