I'm a firm believer in the Housing Theory of Everything™ and in the urgency to fix our housing shortages, but... we can do both at once.
A huge part of fixing housing is fixing regulations, not spending more money (though I'd love to see state funding and capacity to build counter-cyclically), so the solutions don't even compete for funds.
"The Housing Theory of Everything", by John Myers & Sam Bowman & Ben Southwood (2021)
Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates.
That might be somewhat overstated. But not by much.
Incidentally, much of the housing situation devolves from transport, and specifically the automobile, which reshaped both urban and rural landscapes far beyond patterns which had existed for millennia, based on the limits of pedestrian (and occasionally equestrian) mobility.
A huge part of fixing housing is fixing regulations, not spending more money (though I'd love to see state funding and capacity to build counter-cyclically), so the solutions don't even compete for funds.