The bizarre thing it isn't even capitalism/money first. The housing system in the USA is far from the optimal free-market capitalistic structure. It revolves around a people first approach of the right people controlling the regulations, the permitting office, and tyranny of more comfortable majority.
If you let brute-force raw capitalism run roughshod I would build a japanese style capsule megavault and trick a bunch of college kids into thinking it's the cool thing, selling them each 100% ownership of their personal pod for $X. I could probably buy a shitty old warehouse and fill it with these capsules and you could own your own fucking capsule in a coop for maybe ten grand and aside from whatever services your coop votes to buy you wouldn't owe jack to a landlord.