I’m of the opinion that if the free market were allowed to work we would not need “ affordable housing “.
Read an article years ago about housing in the Bay Area. Govt artificially restricts building ( excessive costs, unnecessary permits and red tape). Therefore very little construction gets done, and that that does is very $$$. Then they have laws about how much rent you can charge, and how often rent can increase so people just stay in the same housing for decades because they can’t afford to move. This limits the housing to other people who can afford it, who would otherwise be willing to pay the prices for new construction.
Maybeeee, except then you wind up with a service class of workers who can't live anywhere near the places that need servicing and they have no way to get there.
Unless you're going to bus them all in from afar, it doesn't work. And why spend a long time on a bus to do a low-paying service job when you can just walk down the street 10 min and do the same low-playing job? Why waste time on travel to service the rich who let the free market boot you out when you can service the average nearby?
Here in Phoenix, a 1-bdrm apartment in the ghetto is $1200/mo. Plenty of new apartments being built, all around, and every single one of them are "luxury" apartments.
Doesn't help the problem.
Scottsdale is pretty hoity-toity....where do you think their service workers live? Not Scottsdale! But it's not a peninsula with limited space, so all the service workers ride or drive in from the surrounding, poorer areas.
Hell, you could make the argument that Mesa is a 1,000,000 person service city. Poor, run-down, but adjacent to nicer parts of town.
Hooray free market!!!
Now the poor can have worse infrastructure and worse schools to maintain their role as service industry to the wealthy!
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!