Apparently building housing doesn't provide housing

A marked inability to understand how markets work here:

On either side of the leafy park, which undulates over the graves of 40,000 Victorian paupers, the bulky concrete frames of new apartment blocks are beginning to rise. They will ultimately become 17- and 22-storey slabs that will in turn be dwarfed by a 41-storey tower, all surrounding the park with a glacial wall of “ultra-sleek urban homes”. And not a single one affordable.

The complaint is that building lots of housing in Manchester does not provide places for poor people to live in Manchester. Which is, of course, ridiculous. If we’ve added housing for 35,000 more people to the area - one estimate being used - then we’ve added housing for 35,000 more people to the area.

The part that’s being missed is that here in England almost all of us - as it ever has been - live in second hand housing. It may well be true that the new builds are going to the rich and the rich only. But as they move into those new builds then they leave their former housing and so on up and down the housing ladder. Adding 35,000 new dwelling spaces at the top then frees up 35,000 dwelling spaces at the bottom as well.

Yes, of course, there’s also migration to consider. But the general point still stands. Adding housing adds housing. Even if none of the new build is “affordable” it still makes other housing more so as those laws of supply and demand still work.

Adding more housing reduces the cost of housing. How could it be otherwise?