Why is this? I mean surely given the demand for affordable housing there is a way to build single family homes and make a profit?
One part of the problem is rich people wanting to protect their property values. They have pull at city hall. Some have seats on city councils. They twist zoning regulations around to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to build modest sized, more affordable single family homes and multi-family units in most areas of a city. Such units are confined to older, more run-down (read: ghetto) zones in that city,
if any still exist. The regulations are all about encouraging the development of more units of large, expensive single family homes.
To make the situation more difficult, many new developments plop down as entire neighborhoods at once on dozens or even hundreds of acres of land. The houses are all uniform in style. And they all have a design code enforced by a Home Owners Association. Throw up some gates for good measure to keep out the riff raff. Big chunks of land go to these developments. The developers may get tax breaks or other incentives from the city, such as a whole lot of new city infrastructure being installed for free. Someone building modest sized homes one at a time isn't going to get the same breaks and may struggle to find a good location to build.
The shortage in more modest sized, modest priced housing forces many middle class buyers to get over their heads and buy homes they really can't afford. This also helps prop up demand and help keep a floor under high housing prices.
One result of this exclusionary style method of residential zoning: many people who work in various service businesses (restaurants, retail stores, etc) built in the commercial zones of these "rich" areas can't afford to live anywhere near their workplace. When the disconnect gets bad enough those businesses will have an increasingly harder time trying to find employees. Many places are already dealing with worker shortages now. But all we're hearing is "lazy Americans don't want to work, they want to stay home and collect welfare." The reality is older workers are retiring early. The younger ones are taking jobs closer to home.
Then they go on to claim there is a major housing shortage and the only way out is to build apartments/condos in the cites as "it's more sustainable."
The New Urbanist trope of everyone living in condos within the city center is another absurd fantasy. Every apartment tower I see going up in any major city is a luxury tower. The units are basically getting sold as 2nd or 3rd homes to rich buyers. They're assets to hold, not live in. With inflation ticking up this trend may only get more extreme.
There is no housing crisis in the U.S.
Um, bullshit. We're in another housing market price bubble. There is a big disconnect from reality on several housing market segments.
There are cities which have become unaffordable, but no one has a right to dictate that affordable housing must be made available within the confines of a metropolis.
Rich people shouldn't be able to game zoning rules so only certain kinds of houses can be built across much of a city either. Even if a developer wanted to build affordable housing units or just something more modest he often cannot do so because of zoning rules.
There's plenty of open, cheaper land once you get out of a city, and mobile homes are still pretty darn cheap. I grew up rather poor and lived in 2 different trailer homes out in the boonies. It can be done and has been done in the more rural states since the country was founded.
This is the year 2022, not 1940. Many cities and towns have banned or greatly limited the use of mobile homes. Any mobile home still needs access to infrastructure. You can't just plop one down just anywhere out in the sticks.
The thing that is now happening, the way young adults who aren't rich are adapting to the reality is more of them are opting out of the whole getting married and having kids thing. Our nation's birth rate is hitting new record lows. Life is a lot more affordable if you stay single. And that arrangement might work out for them, but it's not so good for our society on the whole. Our businesses and institutions can't survive without a steady supply of newly born Americans.