A measure of consumers' sensitivity to price can be found with the price elasticity of demand. It measures the change in demand given a change in price. If a ten-percent drop in the price of a product produces a ten-percent increase in demand for the product, the price elasticity of demand is said to be one, or unity. A negative relationship between demand and price is expected, as higher prices lead to less demand. A good with a price elasticity lower than negative one is said to be "elastic;" it implies that demand is highly sensitive to changes in price. Goods with price elasticities closer to zero are said to be "inelastic." They tend to be things that are more essential to everyday living, and that have fewer substitutes. Similarly we can consider how price affects the behavior of sellers. If the price declines greatly, will they produce a lot less, or just a little less? This of course results in a positive number rather than a negative one.

I have found references relating to housing demand and supply for you. Housing is a necessity for which substitutes are not available. However, people can live in smaller homes, which makes the market somewhat sensitive to price changes.A reference for the elasticity of demand that you can use is "An Empirical Reconciliation of the Micro and Group Estimates of the Demand for Housing" by A. Mitchell Polinsky and David T. Ellwood. It appeared in 1979 in the Review of Economics and Statistics vol. 61, no. 2, page 199. In it the authors suggest that the price elasticity of demand for housing is negative 0.7.For the price elasticity of supply, see "The Long-Run Price Elasticity of Supply of New Residential Construction in the United States and the United Kingdom" by Stephen Malpezzi and Duncan Maclennan published in the Journal of Housing Economics 10, 278-306 (2001). The abstract reads:
Most housing models, and most policy analysis, hinge on explicit or implicit estimates of the price elasticity of supply of housing: does the market respond to demand side shocks with more supply or higher prices? Building on a model originally developed by Steve Mayo, we estimate the price elasticity of supply of housing from new construction separately for the United States and for the United Kingdom. We examine the supply elasticity over a very long time frame?from the previous century.There is strong evidence of a "regime shift" in 1914-1947; over the entire period, prices rise in both countries, but not in a continuous manner. Post World War II, the United States is essentially flat, albeit with very large cycles. In the UK, relative housing prices generally rise postwar. According to our flow model, in the prewar United States our implied price elasticity is between 4 and 10, postwar it is between 6 and 13. In the prewar UK our implied price elasticity is between 1 and 4, postwar it is between 0 and 1. Stock adjustment models yield different price elasticities - surprisingly so, in our judgment. They range from 1 to 6 for the United States, and from 0 to 1 for the UK. We believe the stock adjustment 2001 models are particularly fruitful areas for additional work.From this article, you can obtain information to answer the question of how a shock (the second world war) affected the price elasticity of supply. The authors state "In the prewar United States our implied price elasticities from the flow models are between 4 and 10; postwar it is between 6 and 13." This implies that after the war, home builders were more responsive to shifts in prices; when prices increased, they built more houses than they would have in response to such a shift before the war.Individual homes are a private good. Public building would of course be a public good, but are not mentioned in these articles.