It's still totally possible to achieve this (at least in the US, and likely the world), but as a society we've decided it's more important that the top x% get a larger share of the pie than they did in those "couple of decades".
Instead, we let a housing cartel (boomers) forbid any new homes.
Hardly. The people who are not yet on the wrong end of it play nice with it in order to not end up on the wrong end of it, those on the wrong end of it would actually prefer to suffer less, have a decent life and all that. It's just that we're standing on their throats and don't have very good ears, so it can be hard to hear.