[aleph_minus_one]

> Most people are going to be renters forever in my hometown and the government has absolutely no plan to fix it. People will just be pushed farther and farther away from where they work and will have longer and longer commutes because it is impossible to pay to live close to work with the salaries they're making.

[emphasis mine]

I somewhat disagree: at least during the COVID-19 times the government did have a plan to partially fix it: At that time there were a lot of discussions whether work from home will be there to stay or not.

If it would have stayed, that would have partially solved the problem (not for everybody, but for a substantial subset of people):

Since people can live at places where rent or the price of houses is much lower, companies can pay smaller salaries, but employees (after subtracting the cost of living) still have more money. In other words: both sides get their slice of the pie: employers can decrease salaries while employees still have more money.

Unluckily, when COVID-19 was over, companies decided they basically want people to come back to to office (working from home should be an exception).

This was the central reason why this plan failed.