[dimva]

Any increase in the number of homes reduces the homeless population. There are so many homeless people in CA mostly because there just aren't enough homes for everyone there. It won't completely solve homelessness - many people living on the streets now need social services and therapeutic help before they can afford any rent again, but there's plenty of homeless people in California with fulltime jobs paying like $30k/year (around the median salary in France). If you build enough homes, these people would be able to find housing, and social services would be less strained for the people who really do need help.

[xg15]

That sounds a bit like "the reason for this traffic jam is clearly that there are no enough lanes".

Evidently, there are enough buyers/renters around who can afford the higher prices and are able to price out the $30k/year group. So what would prevent rent or prices from rising to the same unaffordable levels in the new development, if there is still demand from this higher-paying group?

I feel if the market rate becomes unaffordable for middle-class fulltime employees, then you have an inequality problem, not a supply problem.

[Anticlockwise]

Well, the Georgists argue that a LVT plus developer friendly laws would prevent prices from rising too high. LVT taxes the value of the land, not the property, so if you have expensive land (somewhere people want to be), you're incentivized to build densely to earn profit from it.

It's not clear to me that's sufficient. You may also need something like a property profit tax to reduce speculation on housing.