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A big part of it is that literally almost every major US city has a self-inflicted housing shortage (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...), which then has cascading effects on every other part of cost of living.

sadly Austin is one of the best US cities at allowing new housing development

That's very true, but it's still subject to demand overflow from other cities where a lot of people can't even hope to afford anything.