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> It's worth noting that most housing developers need to be prompted and incentivized pretty aggressively to build affordable housing in high-value areas even when they're allowed by law to do so.

No car company produces cars for people living on the minimum wage and yet a great many people living on the minimum wage can and do afford cars. Building new housing reduces the value of existing housing.

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cars have much shorter lifecycle than housing, are mobile, much smaller, and get replaced far more often than housing.

Cars ARE housing, hence the urgency to have them. When everything else falls through, you live out of your car, and move it on when the police bang on the window.

Cars also depreciate and aren't seen as an investment.

Indeed. This gets at the root of the problem. Housing can't be both affordable and a great investment at the same time. The latter requires high (and increasing) asset value which eventually precludes the former being increasingly affordable.

The problem with housing is a lot deeper rooted than basic Econ 101 supply & demand models can address.

Tata Motors

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