Building "affordable housing" doesn't pay.
In fact, it is a money sink and you can't get financing for such a project.
Buy two bedroom house, add 3rd bedroom and a bath, and now you have a 3br house, which sells for more. Fixing the two bedroom up to code, and reselling doesn't make you enough to pay for the repairs you did.
This is all caused by banksters and their being able to print money to create mortgages.
And the amount you can mortgage, goes mostly into the ground. Its expensive ground and a cheap structure. And you can't build a cheap house on expensive ground.
That is entirely true, if your lens of perception is simply "make profit."
On the other hand, having a large number of unhoused people using emergency services and making part of cities unsafe and virtually impassable also "doesn't pay," if you look at it from a societal point of view.
When you factor in medical, emergency services, police, judicial and more the typical chronically unhoused person costs taxpayers about $30,000-$50,000. Which does not include the fact that the unhoused/chronically poor often want jobs but their situations are a direct hurdle to them getting employment.
Alas, we live in a "profit before people" society, so it seems unlikely anyone will care... as long as that $30-$50K comes out of public funds rather than private equity's pockets...