What is NOT fine is when you have banks and private equity bullshit chasing homes purely as an asset to flip. That’s the thing we need to curtail, because it’s just money laundering at the expense of the American homeowner.
Maybe? Seems to me that there's a certain level of wealth where this no longer is true. Housing has (unfortunately in my eyes) become one of those black boxes that you put money in and money comes out; it's an investment. But what you're telling me goes contrary to what I know about the housing market: no, actually, houses depreciate in value because they'll have to ask poor people to buy / rent the place at some point. Can I go buy a mansion built in 1930 for a bargain price?
(I do agree about the private equity part, just the first bit doesn't pass a sniff test from me)
How many times do we need to learn that trickle down economics doesn't work? Making the rich richer and happier will never "trickle down" to the poor, it will stop at the rich.
With land, this is particularly obvious. There is a finite amount of land. The more of it is occupied with luxury mansions, the less land will be available for high-density housing. Building 1 new luxury mansion removes land from the pool that could house dozens if not hundreds of people. And rich people don't move in from cheaper housing to more expensive, they just keep both, or they buy the new mansion as a vacation home.
Property is an investment, and there are huge vested interests in keeping property values going up - and not just from rich people, but virtually everyone who owns their own home. You have to fight a lot of these interests to force prices to go down. "Just build more" doesn't work, the space in and around a city is limited.
[0] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/733977
The question is if it is enough - and I would be quite certain it's just a band aid. Unless you impose the construction of cheap housing, cheap housing will tend to not get built - almost every interest is opposed to it.