I read that the median price of a house in the USA is 420k and that 75% of Americans can't afford that.
Other than those novelty 'tiny homes' that are over-priced, impractical luxury items, I haven't seen a 1000 ft starter home built in 30 years. They should be printing them like there's no tomorrow at a hundred g's a copy. These Mc Mansions are ridiculous. A million bucks for a a house poorly built out of inferior material on an undersized lot in an over-crowded subdivision.
If you took like a Denisovan family and put them in that setting, they'd probably go insane, wither and die inside like 3 months.
I don't even know if you can build houses that cheap anymore. The way zoning is designed is to maximize dollars of tax revenue per acre. Maybe little bungalows don't cut it.