why don't we just give these people houses?

Oh, but if the state were to give people houses, it would first have to construct or requisition them. Either of these policies would increase the supply of housing, and reduce the demand for them, both of which serve to reduce the rents (both literal and economic) paid to landlords, and hence depress the market-clearing price for homeowners. And this would never do, because the ToryLabs experiment has an axiom: house prices can only go up.

Viewing without javascript (hawk, spit), that Gawker link renders as the grand non-total of nothing. This is either a very subtle satire on the entire worth of the Daily Hell or someone who puts lashings of style over not much substance.