I argue it is not, because unreasonable desire shouldn't be part of "housing" conversations.

If every single person wanted a detached house on Robson Street, that's clearly just stupid and should be ignored. It's not a supply shortage. If everyone wanted a 3-bedroom condo unit overlooking Kits beach, that's also clearly unrealistic. It's not a supply shortage.

Think about it this way, if you earned the same amount you currently do, and condos and houses were $1000 per bedroom each to buy outright anywhere you wanted. What would you end up with? I suspect it wouldn't be a 1 bedroom condo in a bland area of town. You'd probably have a house somewhere near your work, a condo downtown, maybe a cabin up at a lake.

You may not want 10 different places, so the demand for housing is not infinite, but it's orders of magnitude greater than anything that's realistic to supply.

If we use that logic, we will always be in a supply shortage no matter how much we build, because there will never be enough inventory available to push prices down to $1000 per bedroom.

Which is why I don't consider that original situation a supply shortage in Vancouver. Once you bring "reasonable" into the conversation, there's already enough supply to meet the reasonable needs of the population. As I said before, the problem is the price and current distribution.