The three L's of real estate are well known:  location, location, location. The three i's of real estate development are less obvious: infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Yes, without roads and/or other transportation means, water, gas, electricity, cable, etc, building new and affordable/attainable housing is almost impossible, pointless.

The vast majority of government owned land that could be easily deployed to build more homes is located pretty far from many infrastructure essentials, posing the biggest challenge of all to new construction, mostly because they are extremely expensive, require government-private relationships to build and take lots and lots of time to build, not to mention complex approval procedures to permit, often further delayed by local opposition and land acquisition.

You cannot build a house till you have a foundation: likewise, you cannot build anything related to a home unless that home can function: ie: access, running water, sewage, electricity, drainage systems, etc. Local, state and federal governments and the private sector must come together urgently to address infrastructure to accommodate construction. Without it, lots of the big ideas floating around are not implementable.

The enormous challenges and costs to building new infrastructure also require us to revisit local building codes and zoning. Infrastructure already exists in more densely populated areas and upgrading is often faster and less expensive than starting from scratch.