Is there really such a huge shortage of housing? Or is it more that people "want"* to live in 4 or 5 bedroom houses, with 2 cars on every drive and 2 spare bedrooms for storing junk and/or the once-in-a-blue-moon visitor, instead of a 2-bed flat in Gorgie?
Is it really just the developers "talking up the market", stimulating (fake) demand for their own activities and profits?
I mean, I would be prepared to believe there was a housing shortage if they were building row upon row of tenements out in these Midlothian fields. But they aren't - they are building low-density cauliflower suburbs, creating car-dependent ghettos with no amenities. And even if they are forced to build amenities, those amenities won't survive because low-density housing cannot support them without significant tax rises. All this serves is to spread out the city further and increase car dependency.
The logical endpoint of all this is a sprawling mess of LA-style suburbs, with nothing but ugly drive-thrus, gas stations and parking lots. Where you can only tell that one suburb has finished and another one started is because the franchises start repeating themselves.
Is this what we want? Individuallistic thinking superceeding the greater good? We cannot build our way out of a climate emergency either, we have to make do with what we've got (and stop burning stuff).
Perhaps we should create a new measure, instead of GDP, based on people's welfare? A measure based on health, education, environmental quality, employment, equality, inclusion, democratic engagement, leisure time and of course genuinely needed and sufficient (but not luxury) housing...
* "want" == desires generated by neoliberalism, consumerism, advertising, the fossil fuel industry, the tech industry and the "everything has to be Instagrammable" generation...
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