Unaffordable housing is also killing society

Paul  Krugman is a Nobel prize winning  columnist for “The New  York  Times” whose email service I have subscribed to. The NYT is behind a pay wall - reasonably priced, but these are extraordinary times, and I’m trying to keep families on two continents afloat so cannot afford that. (Incidentally, pre-pandemic, I bought the NYT publication of their stories on The  Pentagon  Papers, and it is excellent - as is their YouTube channel.)

In Mr Krugman’s latest column, he has the following comment:

The phenomenon of high real estate prices undermining cultural vibrancy is hardly unique to L.A.; it has happened many times in many places. It’s reportedly happening in Berlin as we speak.

I’ve been thinking of housing from the point of view of human rights, where its increasing unaffordability is unacceptable, spirituality, where the greed (which leads to builders not building houses small enough to be affordable, house owners who want to "build wealth" through owning a building [it's clearly not a home] - and the compliant stupidity of sheeple in all this is also an issue) behind its increasing unaffordability is unacceptable, and politics, where the unethical involvement of politicians with rental properties in legislation & debates that are enabling and perpetuating its increasing unaffordability is unacceptable, but this is a new perspective:

that the harm being done to lower income people, including many creative people, is also harming society.

I’ll have to think more on that - it's a variation on the fact that one of the evils of poverty is that it robs society of talented people.