My only connection to the field is that I am a guy who uses zeolites in a redneck way - so take this with a huge heap of salt - but I think this is a three part chicken and egg problem. People don't use MOFs because they're expensive, they're expensive because they're not mass-produced, and they're not mass produced because the shape of the demand is uncertain.

The shape of the demand is the tricky bit. They're not like many other emerging technologies; they are a whole class of materials with wildly different properties, each of which you can produce in several forms; and production is wildly different depending on the type. If there is demand for X tons/yr, spread across 10 industries, but 90% of that demand is in one industry that requires properties of XYZ, then you need to produce the right MOFs in the right form.

The issue, in my mind, is that a lot of this stuff sort of requires a very large vertically integrated company or government project to kickstart it. You can't go out as a company and say "we want to buy X tons of MIL-53(Sc)" [0], nobody would sell it to you. You also can't go out as a producer and start making X tons of MIL-53(Sc) either. The ideal would be that you are, say, TSMC and it would enhance one of your processes, so you make a few kg in house, you use most of it, you sell the rest, and kickstart an industry in that way.

From my perspective - which, again, take with a heap of salt - I think that academia could do their part by "advertising" the most promising candidates better. The list of MOFs is long and many are not usable or stable in real world conditions. Take some of the more promising candidates out of the lab and do some demos with industry. Put together some videos. Write up some honest reports toward an engineer's point of view. That would provide a real boost towards real-world applications.

[0] I just picked MIL-53(Sc) because it's funny, obviously nobody in the real world is going to use scandium in a production product.