Academics argue there isn't a housing shortage as much as a problem with income and the mix of housing available

 -- "Housing Prices Are Too High. Building More Homes Won’t Solve the Problem," Barron's

A longer-term perspective, however, shows that America isn’t suffering from a housing shortage. Housing production has lagged behind household growth since 2010, but this doesn’t account for the massive overhang of housing produced in the previous decade. Fueled by the housing bubble of 2000-07, 160 homes were added to the stock for every 100 households formed during the aughts, our analysis of Census Bureau data shows. This level of production created a huge surplus of housing, which has yet to be fully absorbed. 

Put differently, from 2000-21, the nation grew by 18.5 million households. To maintain an adequate inventory of vacant housing, which historically would be 9.3% of the total, the housing stock needed to expand by 20.2 million units. Instead, it grew by 23.7 million housing units, producing a surplus of 3.5 million units. 

... The belief that there is a housing shortage is correctly motivated by concern over the housing-affordability problems that confront so many households. But census data show that these housing-affordability problems largely reflect a mismatch between household incomes and housing prices. 

Here, prices refer to housing prices in the market as a whole, not just the prices of new-to-the-market homes, which fluctuate widely with the pace of housing production. Housing-affordability problems for the population as a whole aren’t related to housing shortages or low vacancy rates. Rather, they are driven by high overall housing prices and low household incomes.

No we're not in this together: it should be obvious that people and places with more resources fare better

 A couple articles in the Washington Post start with the argument that an exogenous event like a pandemic should be a great equalizer between the well off and the impoverished.

-- "A pandemic should be the great equalizer. This one had the opposite effect"
-- "Not even a pandemic can break rich cities’ grip on the U.S. economy"

You don't have to be a Marxist to understand that's not how the world works in capitalism.  

People with more resources do better than those with fewer resources.  (An easy way to figure this out is to read the weekend sections of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and the Friday Mansions section in the WSJ, the lifestyles portrayed are nothing like how "regular" people are able to live.) 

This is most pronounced with health care outcomes such as life expectancy ("The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001–2014," Journal of the American Medical Association, 2016).  Members of higher income households tend to live almost 15 years longer.

Concerning the pandemic, people who have more resources have health insurance so they don't stint on going to the doctor, can withstand gaps in income from hospitalization or quarantine, live in less crowded conditions, etc.

Similarly, cities and metropolitan areas with more resources do better than those places with fewer resources too.  Metropolitan areas do better than rural areas too (" Getting Health Care Was Already Tough In Rural Areas. The Pandemic Has Made It Worse," NPR).

Although some areas can be more vulnerable than others, depending on the nature of their advantages and if their economy is especially concentrated and homogeneous--for example cities like Houston and Tulsa are vulnerable to downturns in the oil industry ("I get tired of the articles that ascribe Houston's economic success to its lack of zoning" and "A follow up on an earlier point about Houston and extractive economies"), and how Michigan was once the center of the US-based automobile manufacturing industry.

Or, at least in terms of manufacturing, Greater Seattle and Boeing, and Boeing's decisions over the past two decades to move away from Seattle because the jobs are unionized.  The company moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001 ("Inside Boeing’s Big Move," Harvard Business Review) and has been decentralizing plane manufacturing to Wichita and Charleston.  They've just announced that all 787 plane production will occur in Charleston. ("Jilted again, the problem isn’t Boeing, it’s us," Seattle Times).

Although many argue Boeing's moves destabilized the company's core competencies ("How Boeing Lost its Bearings," The Atlantic). 

And even when earthquakes or other natural disasters occur, people with more resources tend to do better, the less well off live in areas more prone to flooding etc. There are studies about how the rebuilding effort in response to hurricanes stokes the local economy, although those studies don't fully take into account the economic losses.

But it's pretty clear that low income households (and poorer areas) suffer disproportionately.

-- Greater Impact: How Disasters Affect People of Low Socioeconomic Status, US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Although if "crowding" is something that has to be avoided for many years as a result of the pandemic, the "competitive advantage" of cities -- agglomeration -- is wrong-footed.  

While I believe that over time, with vaccines and other changes, cities will come back from the current situation, where office districts are ghost towns, with the resultant decline in businesses and cultural spaces of all sorts, it will come with great pain in terms of closed up businesses, empty buildings, and a massive revaluation of commercial property.

-- "The next economic crisis: Empty retail space," Politico
-- "Pressure on New York City Commercial Real Estate Worries Investors," Wall Street Journal

This is separate from the issue of too much space devoted to retail and the impact of e-commerce on physical retail, both of which has led to a shrinkage of many retail chains, and the continued bankruptcy and dissolution of companies--for example Neiman Marcus has shrunk and Lord & Taylor, the oldest department store group in the US, is shutting down.  Although the pandemic has accelerated this process.

Great Boston Globe article on the hole in progressive visions when it comes to affordable housing and racial diversity in neighborhoods

Most people aren't aware of all of the institutional supports that created and maintained segregated neighborhoods, in both cities and suburbs.

Sure, people probably understand segregation.  And might know about the now illegal practice of deed restrictions.

But people don't actually know how the term "redlining" was coined--to qualify for mortgages, neighborhoods had to be segregated and white.

Redlined neighborhoods, marked out on maps for banks and companies originating mortgages, were either black or racially mixed, and didn't qualify for loans.

And this was done by the federal government, as part of New Deal programs aimed to energize the housing market and to improve bank profits.

This practice was extended to the suburbs, and it wasn't until the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968 that it was "officially" stopped, although the effects continue to effect housing markets and household wealth dynamics to this day.

I haven't read it yet, but that's the topic of Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (other resources).

Most people aren't conscious that their unwillingness to open their neighborhoods to affordable housing and a wider variety of types of housing--with the aim of increasing racial and income diversity--is out of sorts with their concerns about racism and institutionalized and structural racism in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement.

There's a great op-ed, "Housing will test white support for Black lives," in the Boston Globe by Noah Kim, about this disconnect.

Twitter photo by moiety.

The author calls our attention to this photograph of a yard fence in Newton, Massachusetts, with signs for "Black Lives Matter" and two anti-affordable housing initiatives there "Right Size Newton" and "Right Size Riverside."

Although this and other residents see the "Right Size" efforts as focused on maintaining neighborhood character, without any connotations of racism.