It's kinda crazy that people think you can only get this by being rich. Why don't we just eliminate the market in housing and make it super cheap to live? We have more houses than people.
Housing exists at a particular place, so there is always scarcity of location. More people would want to live across the street from (say) Disneyland than can physically fit, so a market will exist no matter what.
If you mean cheap or free housing should exist as a public works project, that is possible... and what you get without a profit motive is Soviet style apartment cinderblocks.
Soviet apartments were constrained by resources (the economy was balancing guns and butter for a long time). I think we can do better.
Also worth mentioning, much of our housing stock, especially rentals, are totally falling apart and unmaintained. Soviet housing was of higher quality to at least some of our existing stock -- especially in poor areas.
