Several fair points there. The unmentioned element is Environmental / Climate.
That is, even if we could instantly magic into completion, all of the affordable housing to meet all global demand, and give it free to all who require it - as in, "hey! problems solved! enjoy your new homes, everybody!" - then the simple environmental load of doing that would put us quite significantly further on the road to ruin, in and of itself.
Climate change is here and will increase, so any human strategy involving "speed up! do more stuff! build more stuff!" is also inevitably an Own Goal in some respect. Even some things that we consider to be desperately needed for this or that societal reason.
First off, the actual scientists, like the ones at the IPCC say climate change will only slow growth, it won’t ruin us.
Your point - is basically what most well off (and since you’re on HN I assume you’re better off than 80-90% of the world) are now saying about climate change, screw the poor, they need to have expensive energy, expensive food, and according to you no affordable housing. Why? Because you think the world will be ruined, because that’s what your media is telling you, and you haven’t even looked at the scientific facts on this.
You know, maybe you should give up all your possession and live on rice and beans for the next 10 years, knowing you’ve done your bit for the climate, and then see how you feel.
Edit: removed personal attack at the end. It was unnecessary.
That's a whole lot of traits and mindsets you've unfairly assigned to me.
And that's part of the perennial problem with discussion nowadays. It's near impossible to speak without being pigeonholed and caricatured : "omg! you dared to tangentially hint that prioritising building comes with some downsides! one of them! you must, therefore, also hold this, this, this, and this unfavourable worldview! how horrid you are!!".
It's all a bit silly. And ironic, because I'm actually disabled, and on a really tiny income within the scale of my country. I already make my difference by living a low impact life, practicing what I preach. I'm in my 40's and I've never owned a car, and it's not because I can't drive. I consume so much less than my countrypeople, in general in life. While my friend is earning, and consuming, $150K worth of "whatever" per year, goods, consumables, flights here and there for this and that luxury frivolity, raising his kids rich-person style, I'm living a simple life at home making a lot out of a little. There'll be no kids for me.
Screw the poor?? I am one of the poor. Regardless, I still see the basic Occam's reality that our species as it stands (and with massive inertia) is currently saturating this planet's resources in many different ways. And the mindset that we can fix everything by getting busy will always be somewhat paradoxical. Because, as you point out, everything we need is already right there, stockpiled in the hands of a greedy minority.
I was with you until the last sentence. Why the vitriol? This is fundamentally a hard problem and I have a hard time defining an attitude towards climate change that I feel 100% good about.
The scarcity of affordable housing isn't from a lack of housing stock as much as it is from the ways that housing as an investment puts constant upward pressure on housing prices, and the ways that inequitable distributions of housing alienate people from the work of making home. We need people to feel invested in where they live, to take care of it, to care for it, but that kind of culture gets stifled by current housing ownership arrangements, where the incentive and opportunity to care for one's physical space gets sucked dry by the chain of landlords who could care less.
That is, even if we could instantly magic into completion, all of the affordable housing to meet all global demand, and give it free to all who require it - as in, "hey! problems solved! enjoy your new homes, everybody!" - then the simple environmental load of doing that would put us quite significantly further on the road to ruin, in and of itself.
Climate change is here and will increase, so any human strategy involving "speed up! do more stuff! build more stuff!" is also inevitably an Own Goal in some respect. Even some things that we consider to be desperately needed for this or that societal reason.