I mean, I think another root issue is that housing—supposedly an optional system—blocks people from entire other systems.

If you're an FC, and want to get into exploratory vehicles? Better have a house. Doesn't matter if you want to decorate it or not, you need a house in order to have that company workshop, even if it's standing otherwise empty.

If you as an FC or you as a player want to get into gardening? Well, you can grow individual things in flowerpots, sure, but if you want to cross-breed seeds? Better have houses. My FC's lucky inasmuch as we have a large plot in a great location, but we also have enough people who have their own personal houses that our gardening efforts have extended into those yards, too. (Twelve help the poor gardening team for my FC...)

If you gave a way to garden somewhere else—apartments having a rooftop garden, heck even a public 'P-patch' type garden where you could be issued an instanced garden to use without needing a house—and if you gave FCs some sort of option to do exploratory vehicles without needing a house, I suspect at least some of the pressure would be removed. It would certainly not be all pressure on the housing supply, but some would be alleviated.

Because I definitely know people who don't care one whit about having housing, but who just want a garden. Or FCs that just want a way to do submersibles/airships.