Canada

Sure, but to some extent you could say the same about any necessity. Groceries, clothing, healthcare, etc.. Then we could extend that to the things that are required for those necessities, transportion, natural resources, sections of the labour market, etc.. Maybe housing does actually have a larger gap between input costs and market rate, and it's probably the single largest expense for most and particularly those at the lower end of the income scale so it's good place to start making changes.

If we trusted most people to manage their budgets we wouldn't need things like EI and CPP, people would just be setting aside enough to cover that. People also need time to build those emergency or planned upgrade funds so telling someone who's only been on their own to make sure they have enough se aside to cover a major repair isn't very practical.