Is that home ownership rate the % of houses owned by the people living in them or the % of people who live in a house they (or their immediate family) own?

Sounds like neoliberal apologism to me.

If "homes were much smaller" is the problem, why can't people still buy a 1,048 square ft house for half an average income?

How has "historical homeownership rate" changed the affordability of houses, especially with your statistic existing in a vacuum, completely isolated from things like "number of houses available"?

To put it bluntly, you've clearly just grabbed two statistics at random and claimed those are the reasons people can't afford homes any more because "houses have been allowed to become high return investments" and "executives are fucking workers out of every cent they can and obfuscating it by getting foreign slaves to product cheap tat".