The terms 'housing shortage' and 'housing crisis' get thrown around a lot when discussing the state of life in the US. People are constantly asking how we can solve these problems, and those solutions never seem to work. I say the reason for this is that they're trying to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.
There are 33 empty properties for each homeless person in the US. There are objectively enough living quarters already existing for everyone in the US. This means there cannot be a housing shortage.
The barriers that exist between people and the multitudes of currently existing homes don't come from anything having to do with the houses themselves. Every single barrier comes from a failure of policy. Our government's current stance on housing is that people having the freedom to accumulate excess is more important than guaranteeing everyone the right to the bare minimum (in this case, a roof to sleep under).
We don't have a housing crisis; we have a greed crisis. Every time we use the terms 'housing shortage' or 'housing crisis', we help those in power by shifting the narrative away from greed and towards an imaginary problem.