> If it costs taxpayer money to subsidize housing to make it affordable, then you'd just be subsidising the wage costs for businesses indirectly I'm generally

> If it costs taxpayer money to subsidize housing to make it affordable, then you'd just be subsidising the wage costs for businesses indirectly I'm generally not referring to subsidized housing. Yes, certain incentives for building less expensive housing are needed. As you suggest, currently the incentives are towards building more high end, unaffordable housing. Some of it could come down to changing zoning to allow higher density or conversion of office space into housing space. Other ideas would be to create units that share some kind of central kitchen, for example - this would probably require a change in building codes. > or, those workers migrate to another city where the cost of living is lower Sure, some of that could happen and likely has. But people on the lower end of the income strata also tend not to be able to afford to move very far. Also, if you compare places with lower cost of living they tend to also have less amenities like restaurants so it could be that those workers don't move there because the jobs aren't there. Looking back a hundred years or so it seemed we had more options for people on the lower end of the income scale: boarding houses, longterm hotels (which were affordable for people like artists who didn't make much - lots of writers who later became famous lived in longterm hotels), even places like the Y(MCA) (which apparently still exist, but now are more like exercise/activity centers that don't seem to offer any housing options)