Food, clothing and shelter are basic needs. Providing one of them is most certainly creating value.
Real estate is not zero sum. Having shops, schools, offices, factories and whatnot around your real estate makes it more valuable, not less.
There is a problem now around the world in many cities where a great deal of value is created in that government has made it too hard to build new dwellings and the price of dwellings has been rising.
However, there are also cities around the world that have had a lot of growth while having reasonably priced houses.
In 2000, Houston had a population of 3.8M in 2020 it was 6.3 M. From
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23014/houston/population
They have also managed this with affordable housing.
That's something to learn from.