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Zoning was the other driver that made that happen. When developers are required by law to buy a relatively large, expensive piece of land to put a single house on, they have to make the house big and/or luxurious in order to be able to sell it for enough to make a profit.
If you let them subdivide into smaller lots, or build multiple units on the lot, they could charge less per dwelling unit.
(Of course, suburban governments have historically refused to do that because then "the wrong people" (read: blacks, who are poorer than whites on average because of previous institutional racism) would be able to afford them.)
Disclaimer: this comment is not arguing that housing is easily obtainable.
This is exactly why I encourage people to look at older neighborhoods. In certain spots of the midwest, you can find beautiful 30s homes that were built extremely well: brick, less engineered wood, and the triumph of the home over the filter of time - for less than $70k. The surviving 30s houses were built well enough to survive nearly 100 years. On top of that, those old neighborhood designers knew better than today for exactly the reason you mention. They were trying to build affordable housing, and that manifested itself in smaller houses, more neighborly communities, more proximity to your neighbors, and walkable proximity to surviving corner stores/bars. Oftentimes, modern bus routes run on top of the old school tram lines that serviced these neighborhoods.
If you find one of these gems in a town with a big employer, you could feasibly pay down a perfectly adequate and enjoyable home in less than 5 years - assuming you have an in with the company.
Central IL is a good example what for Galesburg, Peoria, Bloomington, and even Morton.
If you manage to secure a salary at Rivian while fixing up a 30s Bloomington house, I feel you'd be in pretty good shape. I understand that securing a good salary is a huge effort though.
There are a LOT of "ifs" and "assuming" and such in your comment. You combine "spots of the midwest" with "walkability" (something it is not exactly known for in general, though I agree that there are rare spots that are ofc), and while you did list several examples, I wonder how many total houses are for sale there? There are ~330 million people in the USA, so even if there are 330k houses that is still only 0.1% of the total - though granted, not everyone is looking for a home, especially if they already have one (and yet, many older people are looking to downsize, at the same time that younger people currently expanding their families by having children are looking to upsize).
Also, black people and minorities - including women these days - ~~do not feel~~ ARE not safe in many midwestern locations. Paying more to remain alive is arguably a good cost-to-benefit trade-off when the alternative, as evidenced by e.g. Ferguson, MO, could be your death, or worse that of your children. In life you tend to get what you pay for, though some are required to pay more than others. A situation like a woman getting raped, being forced to carry the child to term, but with complications ends up dying herself, maybe leaving behind surviving children, can lead to generational levels of poverty and debt from the medical expenses alone, plus lack of care & training of the children for them to exist in the modern corporate climate where e.g. surliness is punishable by being quickly let go - is the risk-to-reward ratio worth all of that? It should at least be factored in.
Internet accessibility is another concern, for those looking to purchase more cheaply while doing the WFH thing. It sounds great to go cheaper / more affordable until you drop too many calls with your boss(es) and get passed up to renew your contract (isn't every job such in the current gig eCoNoMy?), over someone with a tenth your skillset but who kisses butt better than you, including having their wealthy(-ier) parents (contribute to) purchase(-ing) their home for them in a nice(-r) neighborhood with perfect (or at least better) internet.
And how many jobs are even available at Rivian, much less salaried ones? I tried to do a search and was given a quick summary like "5 in my area" but everything wanted to tell me salary amounts rather than number of job openings. Still, I highly doubt that there are hundreds of thousands of job openings.
So while I am upvoting your comment for contributing to the conversation, it all seems extremely niche imho, not able to save most people from their economic hardships, even if it could perhaps work for a thousand or so people, mostly white, and especially unmarried men or possibly infertile women - but even then there are medical considerations affecting everyone too, such as the fact that decent doctors are currently fleeing those states, rejecting lucrative-looking job opportunities b/c of the literal bodily harm that they may come to if they were to go (or remain), and more importantly the ethical dilemma that doing so would entail. Also, even for a white person, how great is it to be surrounded by people talking about black people as sub-human; or for a man to be surrounded by such talking about women not being capable of making choices for their own bodies; or for a straight person... - well you get the idea? Do not underestimate the amount of stress that this causes - b/c if you ever let slip that you sympathize, you can be branded a "traitor", which can earn you some far worse treatment than even members of that "other side" - e.g. look at how Pence was treated, more so than e.g. Nancy Pelosi who was legit on the actual, other side, but him they wanted to literally behead with a irl physical guillotine.
Still, I am glad you mentioned it, I only take issue with the things left out like how it is not available to everyone, and the problems that even those that can do it would face. I hope this also added to the conversation.
I agree with all your points. And just to be clear, my position is definitely not "look, idiots, we could solve the home affordability issue if people knew that the midwest existed" but instead just "for some specific people, these small 30s midwest towns could be promising and worth looking into."