Here's and oversimplified way to thing about the housing problem. It's 90% a policy problem and 10% a technology problem. Todays technology allows you to build economy housing for $200 / sqft. That's pretty much no different from the 1960s when it also cost $200 / sqft. There has be no productivity growth in the construction industry [0]. But that's not the real problem! In San Francisco the median price per square foot is just over $1000 [1]. That's a gap of $800 /sqft between the raw production cost and the market value. That gap has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with policy (zoning, historical association, neighborhood review, environmental review, various other forms of NIMBYism). If we had a HUGE productivity boom in housing production, we could maybe knock 50% off the construction cost. That would save $100 per square foot. Only policy can help bring down the rest.

If you want to nerd out a bit, you can read Ed Glaeser who wrote a piece "The Economic Implications of Housing Supply" which seeks to calculate the Minimum Profitable Production Cost (MPPC) per square foot for every place in America. He then compares that to the actual price per square foot. Anytime there is a gap there is a huge public policy failure.

[0] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/08/17/the-constructio... [1] https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/ [2] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3