Building a single-family home in the right place at the right price has never been more difficult, and Texans are suffering more than most.

Working-class families are finding it difficult to find affordable housing in urban areas, and a growing homelessness crisis is creating social and political turmoil. Finger-pointing among developers, homebuyers, politicians and neighborhood activists has created a cacophony of recrimination.

While other parts of the country are seeing populations shrink, Texas cities are struggling to cope with 523 people who moved here every day in 2019. Texas is growing faster than any other state.

Most new Texans are under the age of 40, looking to start careers and families. They want to live and work in big cities. Harris County added 605,000 people from 2010-18, and Bexar County added 271,000. Texas has added 3.8 million since 2010, exacerbating a housing shortage.

More: Want more resilient homes, convince government to enforce tougher codes

The problem is multifaceted. Homebuilders have not kept up with demand, and when they do build, they concentrate on high-end homes with higher profit margins, according to the Urban Land Institute, a developer trade association.

Another problem is that people are holding on to their homes longer. In 2010, the median homeowner in Houston moved every 15 years. But today, they stay for 23, according to data collected by Redfin, the real estate sales app. In San Antonio, the median homeowner moved every 13 years in 2010, but today they remain in place for 22.

Aging baby boomers entering retirement, but not downsizing their homes, have unexpectedly kept 1.6 million houses off the market, according to Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage lender.

“Older Americans prefer to age in place because they are satisfied with their communities, their homes, and their quality of life,” Freddie Mac researchers found. “The amount of homes retained by seniors is likely to grow as both the number of seniors increases and the barriers to staying in place are reduced.”

Fewer homes on the market mean higher prices, and real estate prices have risen faster than inflation, population growth or income growth, leading to little growth in the number of sales each year, the ULI reports.

“The divergence between household incomes and home prices widened dramatically during the housing market boom in the mid-2000s, and the widening of the gulf between home price growth and income growth has accelerated in the years since the recovery,” ULI researchers write.

The high prices have hurt millennials who are entering the prime home-buying age. But while they may be America’s largest generation, they are burdened by high college debt and low incomes since the Great Recession.

Under normal market conditions, housing shortages would encourage developers to build new homes. But builders have had a difficult time making money on low-cost, entry-level homes. Builders don’t save much on high labor, land and permitting costs when they build small instead of big.

In Houston and San Antonio, the segment with the least inventory is the under $300,000 range. Luckily, builders are beginning to recognize the opportunity.

“Americans are delaying marriage, on average, to their late 20s or early 30s and delaying the birth of their first child until the early to mid-30s,” the ULI report states. “Solutions include smaller homes, value housing, missing-middle attached housing and high-density detached cluster housing.”

More: Unscrupulous developers will strike back against flood measures

In Houston, more than half of the lots ready for constriction have less than 55 feet of frontage, making them comparably small, according to the University of Houston.

In San Antonio, developers have doubled the number of lots with less than 45 feet of frontage in the past year, Jack Inselmann, regional director at Metrostudy, told the Greater San Antonio Builder’s Association.

“We’re seeing more affordability, we’re seeing more development,” Inselmann said, according to reporting by my colleague Madison Iszler.

Real estate developers finally recognize the desires and needs of millennial homebuyers, but they can only do so much to meet that demand alone. Governments can and must do more.

Elected local officials must embrace higher-density development with smaller homes, even if neighborhood associations object. Rules that allow for smaller homes on smaller lots, in addition to greater variety, are critical, the National Association of Homebuilders concluded in a recent study.

“A greater mix of housing types, not just more housing, is needed to meet these differing income and generational needs,” its report said. “But, the housing types that contribute to a greater mix often involve densities that are higher than what local zoning rules allow.”

Texas cities need more middle-income housing; developers are figuring out how to build it, now cities need to encourage it.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com