The demand driven forcing is miniscule compared to artificial scarcity due to zoning permits or bad infrastructure. (Typically slow transportation.)
I've lived in Toronto for a long time, and after pockets of th city got rezoned and high-rise construction was allowed, it created a situation where it was not possible to get onto public transit during peak hours, and people resorted to walking to work for 45 min instead of their planned 15 min commute when they brought their condos pre-construction. Similarly the growth of immediate Toronto suburbs has been so immense, that it is not possible to get a seat on the subway if you don't board at the terminus station (as suburbanites fill them). The city is addressing these problems through transit expansion, but it is taking decades for each project to complete (example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_5_Eglinton).
The main point is, zoning in a vacuum is not evil, or if more palatable, a necessary evil.
In Seattle, basically every building built is built to the maximum zoning allows. And it’s all arbitrary - purely about the whims of the local homeowners.
It may not be perfect, but it's seriously beautiful and developed nicely in the last 20 years.
If that cost becomes too high relative to the income increase gained by living in, say, SF, people will certainly move elsewhere. But they'll still largely move to cities, and the cycle will just repeat there.