How easily could it be, considering that “large productive cities” all over the world—in diverse political and cultural contexts—are suffering from this same problem?
Surly demand (and lots of wealth sloshing around for the top 10%) is part of the problem too. The DC/NOVA area had pretty reasonable housing prices 20-30 years ago. It seems like they’ve been building housing pretty aggressively in that area. But prices used to be capped by what a GS-scale worker could afford. Now those same folks are competing with Google engineers and kids of rich foreigners.