Affordable housing

The cry goes up again "Don't get into debt!" and "We must have more affordable housing". But it doesn't happen.

What is affordable? Affordable to me is cheap to other people. So I can't buy it anyway because they can come in and outbid me; then the prices keep moving up and we get into a spiral - if the value of your house goes up then you can spend more when you move, making the chance to buy worse for those without a house.

Affordable to me is out of reach to others. What do they do?

Who wants affordable housing?
Builders don't. There's not so much profit to be made - the extra time spent in building a bigger house, selling it etc is far outweighed by the extra money made. Efficiency of scale.
Estate agents don't. They are on commission. The higher the price the more they make for the same amount of work. They are heavily incentivised to raise prices.
Mortgage lenders don't. They want to lend as much as possible. Keeps the shareholders happy. They don't want small borrowers, they want large ones. These are the ones they look after. The Carling advert is not far off the mark.
We don't. We want to live in nice houses. Because we've seen them and likely been brought up in them. We don't want a two-up two-down, we want a spare room. We want a nice garden for the kids with room for a shed. We want a garage (probably a double). We want a playroom for the snooker table. We are aspirational. And we want it now, unlike previous generations.
The government doesn't. It doesn't stimulate the economy. And they certainly don't want it in the areas they live in. (Who does? No-one. We think they are the wrong sort.)
The only people who really want affordable housing are those who are so badly off they'll take anything. And they can't afford even affordable houses. And they have no power to affect anything or anyone. They are not preferred customers. They have no voice.