"People may wish to have their own residence, they may live with family members, share a home, live in a garage."
They already do. There are a few things that could reverse the situation. The most obvious is reform of the development process and return of development rights to landowners, but this wont happen without a bloody great fight. The other thing is the huge debt incurred by government providing infrastructure for the extra people. Yes, government can flood the country with new consumers, but they will be bankrupted if they continue for too long, not to mention the effect of all that borrowing on interest rates. Government appears to be ignoring this reality at present, but bankruptcy is a pretty hard force to resist in the long run.
