None of the local "affordable housing" actions I'm seeing seem like they actually address the problem at the level it needs to be addressed. They give incentives to developers to build a certain number of "affordable" units which must stay "affordable" for X number of years for them to get their tax breaks. In the meantime they build a lot more high-end units and very few mid-level units. Mostly this seems like a gift to the developers. Do we get some more affordable units? Yeah, but it's a drop in the bucket and after some number of years they can go back to market rate. People are on waiting lists for these "affordable" units for years. These units are reserved for people making some percentage of the poverty level income. People in the middle get nothing.

In my area/state they've dropped most of the zoning restrictions for locating apartments and ADUs. So you can add an ADU (a small dwelling that can be rented out), but that takes capital that most residential homeowners don't have. Add to this the fear that by building an ADU your property tax will likely go up very substantially and there aren't a lot of takers.

tl;dr Most affordable housing efforts are currently aimed at people who make poverty level incomes (and that's great). I don't see much locally aimed at providing housing that's affordable to folks in the middle. And as rents rise, more and more folks in the middle are not able to afford housing.