It's important for public projects to manage their costs as well, as it affects how much can be built using the limited public funds available. I think we can all agree that we need large amounts of public housing in constrained places like San Francisco, to alleviate the current situation.

It is in fact one of the major advantages of building public housing - you unlock the lower costs of building at scale, which reduces costs in several ways:

• Building the same type of units makes workers familiar with the product and allows them to complete them faster
• Pre-fabricated modular units can be constructed off-site and shipped in, and making them at scale drives costs down
• Large contracts are more lucrative and can hence be negotiated to better rates with contractors

For a wildly successful example, look to Miljonprogrammet that took place in Sweden during the 60s and 70s. Following that project, a vast supply of housing was available for the population, with housing costs below 1% of income being common.