That said, there is certainly plenty of truth to the house building/land use issues. I don't think anywhere has fully handled the new technology of the automobile well as the handling of automobiles has been a major driver of the issues in housing. Unchecked automobile use allows much more land to be used, but conversely encourages dumb land use rules that encourage sprawl and add miserable amounts of noise, pollution, and render most public space (roads) uninhabitable by people. I think the next century will have society figuring out a better balance or some new solutions.
You obviously haven’t eaten British food from the seventies. It was dire.
I lived in a country near the equator with year-round good weather so we didn't have this problem. Many people had land and small vegetable gardens. Fruits tasted amazing. I remember bananas used to be my favorite fruit; that was before the Cavendish variety took over. Nowadays, bananas mostly just taste very sweet with a not much other flavor. Nothing like it used to be. I don't even like bananas anymore. Mangoes also tasted amazing. Now it's hard to find good ones (though still possible but hard). Same with most vegetables; Tomatoes often taste bland nowadays; they're optimized for color, not flavor and they're picked when green/unripe to avoid damage. In many countries in the EU, meat is terrible nowadays. A lot of meat products are heavily processed; sometimes a hamburger patty tastes more like a tough sausage and chicken tastes fatty and rubbery.
If you had the skills to produce something useful, the market was less competitive so it was possible for essentially anyone to improve their standard of living through education and hard work. Also, employees had stronger bonds with employers and it wasn't uncommon for the business owner to sell or handover management of the business to their top employees (and the pool of employees was far smaller/less competitive). Nowadays, it's not possible for certain people to climb out of poverty because their competitors are big corporations who have access to easy money from banks and governments. Also within corporations, the level of competition is extreme, often counter-productive and the environment is toxic, suppressed and censored. Also, there is constant gaslighting in the media telling everyone how good things are when it doesn't match observable reality at all.