The U.S. population is still growing, just more slowly than in past decades, and a shortage only requires building fewer homes than the number of new households forming. That's exactly what happened. Before the 2008 crash, builders had overbuilt. When the market collapsed, a huge share of them went out of business or pulled back hard, and for well over a decade the country built at a slower pace than household formation. The shortfall is cumulative, so you can have a slowing growth rate and still dig a deeper hole every year. Housing is also intensely local. A metro losing residents can still be short of homes in the price tiers people actually want, while another metro simply can't build fast enough to keep up. So the question that matters is whether the homes people can afford, in the places they want to live, are being built as fast as households are forming. In most desirable markets the answer has been no for a long stretch.