So the soviets were short on industrial building/transportation resources and had plenty of space versus the san franciscoans who are 'short' on space and have plenty of industrial resources. the soviet constraint was about as or maybe less centrally imposed as the san francisco constraint...
I think Soviet functioneers understood that when everybody earns more or less the same tiny salary, they needed to create some other stimulus to control masses.
Although USSR had a lot of free space to build, I think new apartments made artificially scarce, especially with the start of the industrialization, when many people migrated from a villages to a cities.
People had to work many years at the same workplace in order to advance in a queue for a new private apartment.
I live in Poland, was born in 91 (pretty much right after the soviets fucked off), but my family grew up in those times.
I think you don't realise just how ineffective and broken the system was. Housing shortage came from shortage of everything else, the workfoce didn't give two shits what they made (horror stories about freshly built budings needing an overhaul, etc
