The problem is that when people are suffering now, they don’t want to be told to wait a decade or two for current luxury housing stock to filter down and become

The problem is that when people are suffering now, they don’t want to be told to wait a decade or two for current luxury housing stock to filter down and become affordable. Just imagine closing a local food bank and replacing it with a vague promise that the local grocery store prices will improve. How well is that going to go over? Long term, we do need more market rate (“luxury”) housing stock. But they cannot be instead of trying to help people who need it now Some places do social housing where they rent a fraction of the units to upper income individuals to subsidize the rest. However in the US funding sources generally have rules that say the units can only be rented to households making less than X% of the area median income. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: even in a properly functioning housing market there are going to be some people who cannot afford mark rate housing, and the assumption is that everyone else will rent market rate units