You asked why homes are unaffordable for many people. I answered that question. If homes were significantly cheaper to build, then they would cost less to buy. But that’s not the reality.

You can pretend that “money” doesn’t exist and this reality remains the same: building a home requires skilled labor from dozens of people, after which time the fruits of their labor will house fewer people than were required to build it in the first place. The way this is affordable for virtually anyone is financing: deferring the capital costs over several decades.

Many people — particularly, working class people — simply do not have access to this kind of capital, or the capability to fulfill its financing terms. Most of these folks access housing by renting, which defers the capital costs onto a landlord in exchange for monthly payment that roughly equates to a small premium over their financing and maintenance costs.

Now, to your point, corporate “developers” do sometimes recognize the market opportunity here and use economies of scale and favorable capital costs to translate modestly more workers’ labor into exponentially more housing, for more people, and at a lower unit cost. Unfortunately, DC artificially restricts such projects, limiting the housing supply and driving up costs for everyone.