The issue with a housing crunch and run away rents is that due to our economic system, it’s kind of too big to fail. If rents and mortgages are a certain price

The issue with a housing crunch and run away rents is that due to our economic system, it’s kind of too big to fail. If rents and mortgages are a certain price, people keep taking out mortgages for that price with the assumption that prices won’t go down. So there is a huge portion of people and loans whose economic situation is dependent on rents and housing prices not going down. If enough people buy into a delusion with high risk to ruin, it’s not longer a delusion Let’s say over the course of 5 years rents decreased by half in the Bay Area. The real estate market would also probably decrease by about half. Suddenly tons of people are underwater on their loans, both regular homeowners and many investors who are no longer able to cover their loans with the market rent. That’s bad for banks and a huge portion of the populace, and could cause a huge economic meltdown. So it’s politically untenable. The only actual solutions I can think of are to never let housing supply become an issue, let inflation take care of it (if people’s income increases due to inflation, and housing prices stay the same, it prevents homeowner/investor insolvency while effectively reducing rent), or just wait for some big natural disaster. So hopefully the big one comes soon and gives us a chance to rethink how we build