Quite the opposite actually.Increase capitalism and reduce government control and you get more housing.

Yes, as we can see from the very great examples of where this approach worked perfectly. Now every one is perfectly housed in decent conditions and for cheap in United States or South Korea. We all know the dozens of thousands of homeless folks in San Francisco and around really want to live in slums or on the streets, and their situation has nothing to do with speculation, gentrification and AirBNB. /s

Are you South Korean? What do you know about South Korea's real estate?

Either way I would say housing in Japan (considering all the constraints) seems to work great.

> Are you South Korean? What do you know about South Korea's real estate?

No. Very little. Just read articles over the years saying they are facing similar issues of real-estate bubble and speculation and that prices in Seoul are getting close to those of New York.

And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

That's not how it turned out in the UK. As this graph illustrates, when the local government authorities were prohibited from building more housing, from the 1980s onwards, the private sector didn't pick up any of the slack: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MmJ5N.png

The capitalists instead decided to optimize for steadily increasing the price of housing by restricting supply, so these are now primarily seen as an investment with nearly-guaranteed returns, rather than places for people to live.

Another piece of data, from the Netherlands, where office space vacancy has significantly increased since making squatting illegal back in 2010: https://en.squat.net/2016/05/27/netherlands-housing-crisis/

> an investment with nearly-guaranteed returns, rather than places for people to live.

Or "magic coin-shitting machines", as Charlie Brooker so pithily put it.