I think there's more to the absurdly high rents here. Rents are out of whack not only with respect to incomes but also relative to the cost of ownership. I suspect this is because far too much of our rental stock is controlled by just a few families. They have cartel-like powers over the price, made worse by the fact that many of them use the same handful of rental management companies. 

I think we need to not only vastly increase our supply of rental housing, but we need much more low-income housing that has the rents regulated to restrict them to no more than 30% of the tenants' incomes. 

We also need to find a way to get more of the rental housing stock in the hands of more owners so that the market can actually function. Perhaps the way to do that is with a fee that escalates with each unit owned.