[closeparen]

California perspective: rich people could meet their needs for workers/artists/etc by liberalizing the market, but this would cost them property value and eat into the market rents they're collecting. Favoring income-restricted housing allows them to address the same objectives without this blowback.

The cost of the necessary subsidy is calibrated to fall on grubby new-money high earners, so it is effectively free for the long-established propertied class who don't need much taxable income & locked in their property taxes long ago.

[seanmcdirmid]

Income-restricted housing isn't sustainable, nor is it very accessible (you either win the lottery and have it, or you are stuck in a very long line).

Liberalizing the market doesn't always work, even in the most dense economic liberal cities, the best environment for sustainable affordable housing is depopulation or some sort of recession or economic stagnation.