Land, financing, and profit.

It should be obvious by now that the private sector cannot compete with the public sector's ability to build affordable housing. Government can effortlessly eliminate three costs – land, financing, and profit – by building on public land, financing construction with effectively zero-interest loans even compensating for inflation, and approving projects proposed by not-for-profit organizations.

Leaving open the opportunity for private sector developers to build for a high-end market sounds reasonable on the surface, but if they continue to operate, they will continue to drive down the availability and drive up the costs of two precious resources: tradespeople from iron workers to electricians, and all manner of construction materials.

So many rent-seekers, from banks to REITs to municipalities to homeowners, depend financially on the deeply entrenched framing of housing as an appreciating asset that breaking with this model is politically very hard to do. But increasingly escalating housing prices swallow so many dollars as mortgages and rents and drain so much investment away from the productive economy, beggaring the tax base, that public spending on essential services, especially healthcare and education, has been progressively weakened for decades relative to how much is actually needed.

Getting people to agree to relinquish unfair advantages seems impossible, as the foundations of someone's worldview only change when one reaches a point in thinking about things where they want them to. No person besides oneself can make this happen. Certainly not a stranger.

Meanwhile, "Economics 101: Supply and Demand!" is not economics. It is a manipulative justification by self-interested parties to preserve a destructive status quo.