for one there is plenty of land to build on, virtually everywhere in the world with very few exceptions
secondly, from my observation it seems that housing availability is also greatly affected by unemployment
Its seems with high unemployment people cram as many people as they can into one dwelling, failing that they start living in cars and failing that homelessness.
so shortage is a complete myth. its a temporary mismatch of supply/demand when people want to live in a less crowded dwelling and its very elastic as well
