There are two types of tech debt in my experience, things get out of date because they weren't maintained and it's harder to do now years later than absorbing some of that work a little at a time throughout the years. And the other kind is because of poorly written code which is often caused by poor business practices and changing requirements.

I don't now what your experience is regarding sw development (especially corporate): - in my experience technical debt is often due to:

"There is never enough time to do it right, there is always time to do it twice"