You mentioned in a few words the biggest problem, which is zoning. The vast majority of land is zoned single family, which is actually a money loser for most mu

You mentioned in a few words the biggest problem, which is zoning. The vast majority of land is zoned single family, which is actually a money loser for most municipalities in the USA. Crushing the local nimby zoning boards and forcing a much higher percentage of the land to be zoned for higher density would cause a boom of missing middle (and high rise) construction that could mostly solve this problem for very minimal capital outlay by municipalities vs trying to build enough single family zoned stuff to push prices down.