Property taxes aren't, in of themselves, a major barrier to home ownership. But generally I think the common sentiment is fairly straightforward - it's a fairly simple supply and demand problem.
My personal thesis though is that housing in reality isn't widgets - market demand is inelastic as most commonly you need exactly one unit per person, and you don't typically want to buy more housing when the price is low, and if prices go up you need it anyways. see OPEC. When they need to bolster revenue, they don't sell more oil, they cut production because regardless if gas is $2 per gallon or $4, you'll likely still need to drive the same amount. Likewise, you need housing regardless if your rent is $1k or 2k - the thing that changes based on your circumstances and what you can afford is the quality of housing you're purchasing or renting. [think of it as a service - it counts too in this scenario, and quality can mean different things - proximity to transit, Boston, having roommates, etc)
Unfortunately, supply is also inelastic; housing is expensive and time consuming, and the total amount available doesn't change that much with price. If an apartment block exists - the landlord will charge either less or more depending on what the market will sustain but he isn't likely to demolish it and leave it fallow in any scenario. Conversely, a parking lot will take years of design, permitting, and construction to put a building on - it doesn't work like a city building game where if you need more housing you plop it and 15 seconds of a dude swinging a hammer a glass box appears.
Basically, what that ultimately means in theory is that you have very steep supply and demand curves in the housing world - small movements in either can mean a large movement in price. In the Boston metro, we have an enviroment where demand has skyrocketed in recent years, and supply has remained relatively static. The only way to fix that is to create an environment where supply can actually flex to demand, and right now the biggest barrier to building more isn't necessarily regulatory, it's financial. The cost structure of new construction in 2023, between financing costs and actual costs to build anything, means that building housing isn't particularly lucrative compared to other uses (like labs), unless you're building luxury units. Affordable housing projects are a market externality, imposed by regulation and supported by housing trusts - they twist the financial picture enough to get built when the market otherwise wouldn't. Negative externalities, like zoning, also impact the entire market. Granted, any supply is good supply - high quality (new luxury units) free up other units, and so on, as an individual's income are fixed much more than a corporation's, and if they can't find supply in their price range, people don't (and can't) spend more - they either compromise on quality or move elsewhere where demand isn't as high. There's enough folks in Boston with jobs that can afford those new luxury units - they're just not available. Labs, on the other hand, are flush with hundreds of millions in vc money. They don't necessarily care how much their space in Kendall is going to cost, just that it's in Kendall.
A fix to that doesn't necessarily exist beyond the tools that have already been deployed - the incentives for private for profit developers just aren't there for housing compared to other land uses. Plus they're usually more controversial publicly, what with zoning boards and residential communities, further increasing costs. In large part, the state can do things to create those incentives, by introducing positive externalities, but most conventional levers have already been pulled, including the state issuing low cost loans to make the financial picture more plausible, state/municipal owned land, etc.
). The marginal impact of small changes in supply or demand in housing can be massive. We've also been brainwashed by living in Boston recently, where the line is always up and to the right. The ass can fall out of a market just as quickly if a relatively small group of people decide to leave to the suburbs. We've seen it before, and while that would have a "beneficial" impact on housing costs, it's a horrible scenario for a city. 
