Then surely I have failed to convey it!

In any case, my edited point about "deadweight loss" is perfectly consonant with the parent poster's feeling of guilt, and with what I presume is your feeling of disgust; it is in fact the economic term of art for that at which you intuitively recoil.

(Although you're kind of equating a very, very expensive home, in the overall scheme of things, with the minimum requirements of decency, if you really think that he's exploiting someone's inability to afford housing, but w/e.)

Now let's get into the controversial stuff...

> Housing is a basic human need like food and clothing.

Agreed. But it's also an asset, because someone has to build and maintain it and have exclusive use of (at least parts of) it, and being a basic need doesn't automatically create a right to something (for obvious reasons) so that asset is gonna trade hands voluntarily like any other. Its price will fluctuate, sorry.

Now, NIMBYs using government fiat to drive down housing supply in their market is an annoyingly common failure mode of local democracy, maybe that's all you're upset about.