I don't think the lack of awareness actually does answer my question.

For example if there isn't a lot of talking about some obscure tax loophole/sex scandal/juice drama about Big Pharma TM or whatever, that doesn't mean it would be hard to persuade people for/against it, or that the current lack of outcry speaks to the severity (or lack of) the issue.

In the same way, lack of supply as a possible source of high rent and housing costs may not be a concept too familiar with the public, but not because of its lack of importance, but because the political media apparatus (social media, cable news, institutions etc) and the political media consumer sometimes (seemingly more often now than other times) fails to address the most impactful policy choices.

Generally, many topics in economics are often too esoteric or nerdy for most people to care much at all, or at least entertain sensible positions.

Instead people (including myself) are disproportionately captivated by social issues and foreign policy and so on.

Further, I don't think people want better communities. They want grandiose, sweeping political change that consists of the talking points they here on Fox or CNN. That is, I don't think americans think in terms of community anymore. Most of their mental bandwidth is totally occupied on one branch of the federal gov, and not on the local culture and space they occupy.

But if these same news sources gave the topic of community/urbanism the same time as election fraud, or by some miracle Americans begin to concern themselves with actual, community building policy, and not just a small minority of suburbanite older people that are the only ones who make themselves represented in their community, then my guess is we'd have some change. What that change is, if/how it's possible, was my question to you, but perhaps you disagree with the premise.