Sure it may be difficult to accommodate the demand quickly. But at this point you've agreed on the point I'm making: the lack of supply - not the demand - of ho

Sure it may be difficult to accommodate the demand quickly. But at this point you've agreed on the point I'm making: the lack of supply - not the demand - of housing is what causes rents to rise. There are cities with orders of magnitude greater demand for housing that have low rents because the supply exists. A rapid spike in demand will probably be accompanied with a temporary increase in cost as supply catches up, but it will not result in long-term cost increases unless the supply is constrained. Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, etc. are not dense cities by any means. If apartment buildings are taking 10 years to get built then there is massive mismanagement or onerous regulation going on.