If rents can’t rise quickly, then the expected profit of a building goes down, which means prices for land go down, which means it is cheaper to build, which means it balances out.

If the balance is far enough off that everything turns into commercial real estate, that can be solved, too.

You’re misunderstanding 2 fundamental things. First is that it’s very expensive to build anything in major US cities with the high cost of labor, materials, and permitting. Rent control completely tips the balance against building housing that you’ll rent out. Second is that the value of land is not going to depreciate in these premier US cities just because it’s not profitable to build rental units. There’s many valuable things you can do with that land, rental units will just stop getting built in favor of other things.

> prices for land go down, which means it is cheaper to build

By this logic San Francisco should be one of the cheapest places in the world to build

If there is not enough supply for the demand in housing then nothing but meeting demand with new supply will solve that.