High rents mean that a lot of people like a place enough that they'll fight (economically) to live there. The fact that you've lived in a place since before other people might feel like that should entitle you to low rent, but it doesn't, that's not how markets set prices.
High rents are just once aspect of "unpleasantness", and people will move around till the misery is equally distributed. Economies ebb and flow and shift from place to place, so it the process never ends, but don't be fooled, there is nothing broken about systems of market real estate prices, in a sense they're the final leveling of a system, the equalizer of all other desires.
It's like currency exchange rates, whichever way they go, there's good an bad, can afford more foreign goods but nobody wants to buy your goods, or can't afford foreign goods but can sell exports. But there's nothing to "do" about exchange rates, accept them as given and plan accordingly.
Bad transportation problem in your city? Think the new public works project is going to fix it? Think again, better transportation makes for more efficient redistribution of misery.
Now, I don't mean to sound negative: the redistribution of misery is a leveling, like stock prices going up and down with every trade, there is still a buyer who wants in and a seller who wants out. The redistribution of misery always entails some people getting less miserable.