Even if you get rid of all rental housing, the housing market will crash sure, but the labor market will crash at the same time. So that doesn’t help so much in

Even if you get rid of all rental housing, the housing market will crash sure, but the labor market will crash at the same time. So that doesn’t help so much in the short term. Ok, when the labor market comes back, we still have N houses but not everyone can afford those houses, the bank holds them and eventually they fall apart due to maintenance issues (why buffalo NY has a housing shortage even though it has half the population it used to). So maybe we can solve them by just giving the houses away to people, I guess? Can they afford to maintain them? Since the market is inflexible, why should anyone build new ones?