cut-throat market

The cure:

There is no market pressure for landlords on properties they own. Prices for upkeep and repair can increase and property tax can increase, but these costs increases are negligible over the term of a rental agreement. The housing market pushing prices higher only affects their ability to expand and buy new houses for renters they can mooch off of. When they raise your rent becuase of the housing market, AT BEST they are unethically farming your money to expand their investments that you could otherwise be investing in yourself. At worst, and more likely, they are simply taking advantage of you and using the market as an excuse to boost their margins to hoard more money for themselves and/or themselves luxuries you can never afford because rent takes up more than half your gross salary.

It's zoning artificially restricting supply in order to appease classist/racist NIMBYs.

Nope, it’s capitalism. Property is an investment, and the class of people that live off investments also control our system/governments.
If you own multiple houses, things are going awesome for ya.
- Property is an investment because of the policies pointed out by OC.
Nope, Land Banking
Why build housing and bring housing prices down when you can buy a plot of land, get permissions to build and just sit on it until it's impossible to get a higher price and then build just enough houses to maximize profits without ever lowering housing prices.

novibe nailed it elsewhere in this thread, but nobody's explained the mechanism.

https://youtu.be/0quhLtBXijM?t=4m30s

Within 90 seconds the mechanism is explained, within 5 minutes you understand the money flow, within 15 minutes this meme is covered, and within 20 minutes there's a suggested solution.