Mainstream research has led us to the situation we're in. The politicians don't want to discuss the actual fix because it will get them voted out of office. Passing a policy that drops housing prices by 50% wouldn't even be enough to make major cities affordable here in Canada, it needs to be somewhere in the 70-80% range.
Population went down in cities everywhere? You're calling me out for doing my own research, but you're just straight up lying now. https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20404/vancouver/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metro%20area%20population,a%200.97%25%20increase%20from%202020. https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23130/san-francisco/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metro%20area%20population,a%200.03%25%20decline%20from%202020. https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20402/toronto/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metro%20area%20population,a%200.94%25%20increase%20from%202020.
That listing you posted, there's so many things wrong with what you that I don't think you have ever lived there let alone speak the language. First, It's nowhere near 2300 square feet of house. Those bedrooms are reasonable, but I wouldn't call them large (8jo, 140ish square feet for two of them and 235ish square feet for the big one), That entire upper floor is maybe 800 square feet in total, and the downstairs is smaller because half of it is a garage. It's probably a 1400-1500 square foot home. Second, It's 40 years old. That may not seem like a lot in North America, but that's nearing the end of it's life in Japan given their construction. Third, it's 14 minutes from a train station, but not a JR rail station. The Toyoko line is a private line, and that station gets nothing but local service. It's a 30-40 minute ride to anywhere in central Tokyo. It has a garage for a reason, because a car is essentially required for that family.
We have enough housing in Canada, there are just under 17 million units for 40 million people. Given that people live together and have children regularly, that means there's no problems.
The issue is an investment problem, how much money would you spend if you knew that no matter what you put in, you'd always get more back? That's what housing has been for the last 30 years... Until we remove the profit from housing investment (but leave the profit for construction, renovation, etc) we will never fix the problem. Building more housing doesn't make the land under it any cheaper, and the land cost is the problem.