I think reducing complex economic problems to snappy 1 word reduction is generally not a very good idea. It just leads politicization of the issue making almost all discussion of the topic impossible.

Terms such a 'Neo-liberalism' is a become meaningless term that has been project into every possible direction by ever possible social scientist and amateur and have become so broad that it basically means 'it exists in the world currently'. The same fate would happen to uses like 'Neo-feudalism'.

At some point one just has to spell out what the actual problem is.

> Asking four people here would yield five different answers. And they'd all be somewhat correct and correlated!

I think we can argue about some of the drivers, but the fundamental reason is a simple supply and demand. One can argue why there is so much demand, or not enough supply.

I think we have a pretty clear understanding why in most western cities supply failing to grow as fast as demand.