Affordable housing in the US has rarely if ever meant government-built class A construction, and actually that model -- the high-rise housing project -- has for somewhat anomalous reasons been a disaster here. Historically "affordable housing" was a mixture of boardinghouses, SRO hotels, and tenements. Why did this type of housing go away? A mixture of homeowners wanting to keep their property values up and well-meaning but naive reformers.

I wonder if there are places in the US that can get back to affordable housing, and if so, where.

Maybe in places like Nevada where the property values don't keep going up?