Of course mass timber won't solve the housing shortage. The housing shortage is entirely a self-inflicted problem arising chiefly from insanely restrictive zon

Of course mass timber won't solve the housing shortage. The housing shortage is entirely a self-inflicted problem arising chiefly from insanely restrictive zoning laws that prevent construction of high-density walkable neighborhoods. It's not only about NIMBYism, though that alone is enough to cause the current crisis. Building an apartment complex in an area fille with single-family units is nearly impossible. Building a high-rise? Forget about it. It's also the fact that mixed-use buildings are still a taboo in the US (God forbid people could work and shop where they live, just look at the hell that is Brooklyn, the EU, and Japan, and ..!). And sticking a high-rise in the middle of a suburban sprawl immediately faces the classic opposition of "but what about traffic and parking", because we can't build public transportation networks either (the opposition to those, of course, is "but nobody uses public transport"). That's why the article misses the point: housing shortage is not a problem about houses.