It's impossible to drive housing costs down via development, unless you also ban immigration. Development promotes further population growth. The ideal is high rent AND high income.
Not sure if trolling, but if supply (housing) increases faster than demand (immigrants) prices go down (assuming you believe in Economics 101).
You could argue that it's impossible to build fast enough to surpass immigration rates, but that seems pretty easily disproved (for instance: Las Vegas since 2008 [1]).
I believe the issue is that development alone isn't the biggest factor in city size and housing costs. At least not in an international market. As you bring the costs down, either more people come into town, because the job opportunity is good and the rent is low enough they can make good money, or money flows in from elsewhere until the prices go back up.
The Las Vegas example was coupled with a global downturn especially focused on real estate. Also, geographically, Las Vegas has more possibilities for expansion outward than SF, and it doesn't have the tech workers bidding up the prices as badly.
That sounds like the Field of Dreams[1] theory of civic planning, and I'm pretty sure there are plenty of examples outlining why it doesn't always work out well. For one, Detroit.
You could argue that it's impossible to build fast enough to surpass immigration rates, but that seems pretty easily disproved (for instance: Las Vegas since 2008 [1]).
Or did I misunderstand your argument?
[1] http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/nevada/las-vegas/