Have you heard? According to media reports, the Millennials are responsible for the death of pretty much everything. Wine corks, napkins, the American Dream, the beer industry, homeownership – it’s a pretty long list.

Behind the hysterical headlines designed to engender outrage (and Internet infamy) lies an uncomfortable truth: the Millennial generation is quite different from that of its parents, the Baby Boomers, and from the unmoored generation that preceded it, Gen X. This truth, by the way, is only uncomfortable because the marketers and media refuse to acknowledge it in a thoughtful way, preferring instead to lay waste to an entire generation for their allegedly poor choices.

Though it’s fun to blame the feckless Millennials for all the world’s problems, it’s not really fair. After all, as more than one Internet wit has noted, if a Millennial received a dollar every time a Baby Boomer complained about the generation, they would have enough money to buy a house in the economy the Boomers ruined.

For a change of pace this week, columnist Scott Van Voorhis alleges the Millennials are not, in fact, responsible for the current state of the Greater Boston housing market! Careful consideration has led him to conclude that a generation ranging in age from 35 to 20 years old can hardly be held accountable for real estate’s riotous past two decades.

Van Voorhis contends instead that it is the Baby Boomers who are to blame for our current lack of affordable housing. After all, despite spending their youths railing against “the man,” the Boomers went on to head the very agencies and institutions that could have addressed this issue years ago. Housing experts have been warning that we would find ourselves in this very situation for more than 30 years – and no one listened. How is that the Millennials’ fault again?

So here we are with extraordinarily expensive housing that shows no sign of abating. As we all (even the Millennials) learned in high school, the only solution to high demand is to increase supply. (Later we learned that it is also possible to continue to restrict supply in the face of high demand and get rich in the process – which may be financially lucrative, but is morally bankrupt.)

The answer is obvious: build more housing. Yes, of course, it’s not that simple – zoning restrictions, high land costs, lack of labor, blah blah blah. If we really wanted to do it, we could do it – we could figure out how to overcome those barrier and get that housing built. But we don’t really want to, because it might get built in our backyards.

Already Boston bears more of the housing-creation burden than its surrounding environs. Eventually it will be built out and the suburbs will have to step up. Here’s hoping that Millennials take over those agencies and institutions soon and effect some real change – because if they don’t, it won’t matter which generation it’s fashionable to blame when we’re all living in shanty towns under the highways.