I think at some point, even if the government were to scream "let there be more housing", there still needs to be private capital poured into these very expensive projects, and surely there must be a significant amount of analysis done to determine where it makes sense to put up condos, where amenities and other businesses sprout up in response, and rinse and repeat.
The side of supply where I think things get dicier is wrt wealth inequality. The real estate agent I used to buy my house had 3 mortgages of her own, it's an incredibly common thing for well-off people and real estate insiders to over-leverage on rental property mortgages. My wife had friends from China buying up property with corruption money given to them by their parents, it's been a thing since forever. There's no easy way to regulate who gets to buy houses and who doesn't.
I get what you’re saying, but didn’t Canada do just that? That’s not to say that it was easy, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.
Additional/secondary homes, and especially empty homes need to be taxed more to help disincentivize the anticompetitive behavior in the housing market that you mentioned.
But you're right, I don't think there's going to be a single action that solves the problem fully on its own, so taking it one step at a time is a good approach.
The high paying companies benefit from this when the markets are up, as their stock prices appreciate due to being able to compete in the market and remain highly paying companies. And when bubbles burst, their stock prices may go down, but so do their outlying obligations, which are denominated in dollars also. The gains made and invested into the company during the boom years allow strong companies to ride out the lean years better than their weaker competitors, whose workers are then in need of a job at one of the remaining companies unless they become or are already self-employed. This allows the strongest companies to get the benefit of both extremes of market conditions.
All of this causes metro areas, which are full of both established megacorps and VC-infused startups, to become pressure cooker bellwether barometers of property values and rent prices.
There are many ways to solve the problem of unaffordable home prices, and an answer is more supply. Why it isn't chosen more often is primarily a political problem inasmuch as it is a market problem, or land availability problem, or zoning problem.