Wages are lower than they should be. Wages would be higher if employers were not colluding. Collusion is hurting both high demand engineers and renters.
Google, Amazon, Meta, etc. all report their payroll data to a centralized third party who then reports back to them what they should be paying their employees. Sure, companies can choose to nudge those numbers up or down, but it's exactly the same thing landlords are doing here.
We need to make colluding to keep rent high and wages low illegal.
Because both are at the cost of workers and for the benefit of capital.
Owners win both ways, workers lose both ways.
Edit: Also, the collusion is by the few against the many in both cases.
Also also, the prices are artificial -- collusion is keeping rents artificially high and wages artificially low.