What both Loony-Progs and less insane Dems alike don't want to understand is that government @#$%ing around in the housing marketplace, whether rent control or anti-growth regs or enviro-regs or milk-the-developer fees or overlapping permitting processes or ... combine to create housing shortages and skyrocketing rents and house/condo prices. Measures like loft conversions (re-purposing old unused industrial buildings) or dorm-like set-ups or micro-apartments are not so much innovations as ways to bypass some of the bureaucratic crap that burdens and inhibits the building of housing.
Government is the problem, and getting government out of the way will be the solution, if a solution ever happens.