A huge amount of housing issues across North America are due to zoning issues, with areas that don’t allow high density housing to be built (or where the residents fight fiercely against it). You don’t need to deal with most of the other problems you mentioned if you fix this first.
The other issue is vacancy. 10% of homes are unoccupied. Coming up with ways to fill even some of those properties would be hugely impactful.
> The other issue is vacancy. 10% of homes are unoccupied.
This is the second time I've seen this number thrown around, but as near as I can tell it's completely wrong[0]. Homeowner vacancy has never reached higher than 3%, and the 10% figure was rental vacancy at the height of the last recession: it's now 5.8%.
Aside from the fact that the number itself is outdated, it also lumps the entire US into a single category. Most of the land in the US isn't suffering from a housing crisis, and including homes in those areas in one big national vacancy rate doesn't help understand the degree to which vacancy is playing a role in the big cities. You need to be looking at vacancy by neighborhood, not by country.
The other issue is vacancy. 10% of homes are unoccupied. Coming up with ways to fill even some of those properties would be hugely impactful.
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