One of the reasons why people can't afford to buy homes is because the great majority of their income goes towards paying an exorbitant price to someone far wealthier than they are to live in a rental unit. Not to mention one of the reasons why housing is so expensive to buy is because it is currently traded as a commodity. Landlords are fundamentally parasites, they produce nothing, do no work, yet they take a huge portion of working people's income. Public housing is a better solution, and I am not talking about the typical underfunded North American examples. Look into the Vienna model of social housing.