[yellowapple]

> however many people this helps, it will take just that many getting hurt in order for it to happen

This presumes that the number of people this helps is equal to the number of people this hurts. That's unlikely, given how wealth concentration tends to work in capitalist economies (that of the US included).

But yes, we need to address the root of the problem - the root of the problem (as applied to housing) being the fact that land is treated as ownable property in the first place. That's fine and dandy, but that produces rather nasty externalities that are long overdue to be internalized - specifically, via land value taxation.