No... if you simply increase supply to actually meet demand, prices will fall. This affordable housing nonsense is a complete red herring. Affordable housing is a lottery solution that helps a handful of folks... and in many cases isn’t even affordable. America needs to stop trying to fix all these issues with these one off solutions and look at the bigger picture. Just build more homes. Go look at places like Japan where housing is affordable... it has nothing to do with mandated affordable housing which NEVER works.
However, if rural areas allowed individuals to have access to small plots of land and utilize cheap portable housing units where they could work on sustainable agriculture and community programs to promote self-sufficiency, and social safety nets to address issues of people with disabilities that may not be able to care for themselves without assistance then I believe the homeless crisis could be greatly adverted and also give purpose and fulfillment to those struggling with inner-city homeless issues.
> It isn't a supply and demand issue IMO.
With all due respect, you’re wrong and haven’t read about it enough then. Think about it like this, over the past few decades we’ve built fewer housing units than our population needed. This allowed demand to keep rising faster than supply, this pushed prices up. If you reverse that trend and make housing easier and cheaper to build, this trend would reverse.
In my area there is a lot of housing available, but the housing market rate has gone up so much that people with available housing don't want to rent it out to people with poor credit that have been adversely affected with financial issues, and if they are renting it out they aren't going to go below market rate. They'd rather it sit on the market for a year or more, all the while they can claim tax breaks and funding.
There is a lot of rural land as well. If you're homeless or struggling, unfortunately there is almost no place you can go in America with the exception of a few places like Slab City where you can basically inhabit some land and setup a basic shelter. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of landowners somewhere that maybe owns 1000 acres of land that they use for their leisure or the government, and they definitely don't want you on their property even if you're a nice individual just looking for a place. In America, you're expected to work and buy your freedom of the necessities of a basic shelter.