Why does it seem like the only types of housing people bring up are “affordable” and “luxury”?

Why must everything be forced to the extremes? This pushes, otherwise rational, people to spend way too much on housing.

So-called “luxury” housing is usually just newly built housing. After all, if you’re a developer, why would you characterize your new apartments as something else when you could call them “luxury”? In 20-30 years most “luxury” units wont seem so luxurious anymore.

It’s also a convenient bogeyman for NIMBYs, since they can use it to paint all market-rate housing as some kind of elitist plot.

This only applies when the people buying have a need for it. Once you add speculation, it falls apart.