So sorry if you thought this post was about the title. It's more a question, and how to achieve such a thing.
I grew up on about over an acre of land. We had an orchard in the back of our yard, apples mostly. I yearn for the days of my youth. I make a good living, by most standards, I'm above average. So why can I not buy a house like in my youth? The divide seems so very large. By most measures I was in poverty in my youth. Yet I cannot even afford that lifestyle. Why is that? Why is housing so damn expensive?
A couple of factors influence the artificial inflation of real estate prices
By manipulating the price of money, cheap credit, fuels inflationary bubbles.
Investment in real estate is a smart way of securing a return, but this has two side effects: more money is chasing the same inventory, and the number of buyers, especially Chinese, is huge, and now surpassed by Black Rock.
A Chinese can get a mortgage 20-50 times the income, and in the West it is usually 3-4 times. This disparity causes the "smart money" to invest in the US.
This then creates a bubble in local real estate prices, such, that the local average Joe is incapable to buy.
This in turn puts pressure on rentals to go up. ( Often rentals are also part of the investment scheme).
By artificially inflating the immigration numbers social housing is under pressure, dislocating original local demand.
To satisfy it, government has to compete in the market place to buy places in order to be able to built "affordable" housing.
Putting up another real estate upward price pressure.
Over the years it turns out to be such that your wage will not be enough to buy.
It basically shows the truth of what Ron Paul, and the Austrian School of Economics, predict, is that this system favors those with access who are privy to the curve.
This then repeats the cycle.