So what land is your tiny one story home going to sit on (and be connected to utilities)? Of course, if you're flexible where you live such things exist and are called mobile homes.
Sure, there's plenty of dirt cheap land in the US some of which even has electricity and water available for a possibly non-trivial hookup charge. (Or maybe you tank in water and use solar.) But the problem with building a house on that land (or plopping a mobile home) isn't the cost of the house. It's the fact that it's nowhere near jobs or other amenities people want to live near.
ADDED: The cost of housing in rural Nevada isn't what people are complaining about when they talk about the high price of housing.
You make good points, but they're not super relevant to the article (if you read the article it's clear that they're not talking about big cities, nor are jobs and amenities mentioned, other than the point I mention below)
Irrelevant to what? The price of attractive but very compact housing on cheap land away from population centers people want to live around basically isn't a problem for any but a minuscule slice of the population. It certainly doesn't address any issue that a potential tech worker in the bay area or NYC has.
Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with big cities. The author explains how the development of infrastructure, notably highways changed the dynamic to sprawling suburbia and how suburban "nodes" link to the main metroplex in "second-tier cities." This was because of the fact that you can just drive further and keep your job.
Affordable housing requires affordable land. Big cities almost by definition do not have affordable land, therefore the housing will never be affordable in the way the author is asserting.
Yes, I read the article. All the handwaving about maybe land on the fringe... but maybe that would actually be more expensive because of land use restrictions... and utilities would have to happen somehow but not clear about the costs.
>Affordable housing requires affordable land. Big cities almost by definition do not have affordable land, therefore the housing will never be affordable in the way the author is asserting.
I agree. My assumption was that, given this context, he was talking about the outlying areas of cities people were interested in. Of course, otherwise, land prices are not the issue and housing construction prices aren't really the issue either.
Many counties prohibit this use via land use regulations defining this activity as camping and providing for a maximum time you may camp on your land. So it is likely not something you can do in a large part of the US.