I completely agree with what you are saying, I'm just describing what ACTUALLY happened. With 99% occupancy, this is literally what the price happened. Otherwise I can't explain how my rent was 1400$/month for a 2 bedroom 3 years ago and now it's 2700+$, which is insane

Yep! It's because of continuous near zero rental vacancy in Vancouver.

Landlords can continue to increase the rent at the maximum allowed every year and tenants are forced to stick around because where else are they going to go? Move to what apartment? There are none.

So long as there's practically no available apartments landlords will feel free to keep cranking up rent. If we ever get to the point where renters could genuinely have the ability to benefit from moving, then landlords will think twice before raising rents.

Briefly ever so briefly at the start of the pandemic when all the students left rents plunged. That shows what needs to happen. Not kicking out all the students of course, but the creation of a huge amount of surplus homes. Only in such a healthy vacancy environment will rent increases go below inflation.

Indeed! From my understanding, they are going to make a bunch of very high density towers in north vancouver and kitsilano that should resolve a good chunk of these problems, or that's the hope.

That's correct. But the price an investor can charge to renters scales with the opportunity cost of buying, so (house prices x interest rates).

Or equivalently, the price an investor will pay for a house scales with (rent - interest payments). If interest rates go up and housing prices don't fall, then market rents must be rising.