It's an unpopular take ... they said it up front.

The term "average" is you adding words to the original comment that weren't there to begin with. At best "average" is too subjective and nebulous to be meaningful without you providing a very clear definition of your intended context, at worst, it's loaded terminology.

I don't want to imply that I know specifically what that person meant by over-consumption regarding housing and transport, however, it could easily be applied to situations like ...

~ The trend in some parts of the world to build ever larger houses despite people having smaller families / fewer children.

~ People choosing to live alone, even when they have other options available like living with family or having roommates (as per the image).

~ People living alone in general, but choosing bigger homes with multiple rooms / bathrooms that were intended for families and people with roommates, leaving the additional space / room largely unused.

For transportation, the overconsumption side of that is often based on the argument that people are buying vehicles when they don't need one, buying larger and less efficient vehicles than they should, driving solo instead of carpooling, or avoiding taking public transport when it's available. Specifically the argument about moving closer to work in relation to over-consumption is, and I'm guessing here, addressed more at people who choose to live further away from work for reasons like "they don't like that part of town" or because they'd rather drive than take public transport / walk.

In the USA, for instance, there has traditionally been a very heavy stigma against "poor people", and so for a certain percentage of people who actually are poor or very close to it, over-consumption is a mechanism they will employ to mask their economic status. For example, wearing designer clothes or at least knock-offs, buying a new expensive vehicle they can't really afford, moving to a more expensive neighborhood for appearance, driving to work instead of using public transportation or walking, etc.

Obviously we can all cherry pick anecdotes where these things don't apply and it's easy to assume that how things are where I live are the same all over everywhere even though that's not the case, so keep that in mind.