Low-cost urban housing is illegal to construct in the US due to building safety codes, rules on minimum size, etc. The US federal government (and some state/cit

Low-cost urban housing is illegal to construct in the US due to building safety codes, rules on minimum size, etc. The US federal government (and some state/city governments) has a tendency to always increase safety standards just enough that the bottom X% of people are priced out. They do it with cars as well. New cars start dipping to the low-mid $10K range? Time to make infotainment systems mandatory and add more mandatory airbags. This doesn’t affect 90% of consumers but the bottom 10% get squeezed out again.