Situation in Europe is often reported in misleading ways. Everybody calls it "housing crisis" - but we do not have millions of homeless roaming the street. It is actually a "moving crisis" - people want to move to nicer places but can't afford it. I.e. here in Germany, we have close to 1M perfectly habitable empty flats/houses - but they are in rural areas or the countryside. Indeed there is high demand for urban areas and cities, at the same time rural villages struggle to find and retain their population because everybody (especially younger people) move to the city. You might have heard of those italian villages offering houses for 1€, just to attract families and keep those villages alive.

Canada has had a "housing crisis" for 15 years now. The main campaigning ground of the opposition are issues with housing.

In brief, too many USD printed since 2008 (especially the Covid money printer), that percolated into certain jobs/professions – and lead to highly inflated asset prices.

These things are worth what they always were, FIAT currencies have lost value.

Too few houses, too many landlords (commercial and "investment properties")

The strange thing is that while I definitely see it happening in many places around the world, not all the causes are the same. I think @moralestapia has it right: massive inflation is likely a root cause.

I recall a thread from someone from South America in the Slovenia subreddit, where they said they wanted to move to Europe because it's impossible to afford a home where they currently live. The response was basically "yeah, welcome to the club pal".

It's definitely a global issue, rising population mixed with late stage capitalism.