It's always struck me that housing regulation (well, a lot of regulation really) is written by rich people for rich people. When I moved out of home I'd have b

It's always struck me that housing regulation (well, a lot of regulation really) is written by rich people for rich people. When I moved out of home I'd have been perfectly willing to live in a minimally insulated log cabin, shipping container, etc of sorts with basic running water and wiring that consisted of me running conduit up the walls. I could then upgrade it slowly over time with insulation, stud walls, etc etc time permitting. There's tons of land in the UK that'd be cheap enough to do this. You just can't, though. It has to be done "to code" and with planning permission and a billion other legal things, which basically means forcing everyone into a level of luxury/"modernity" that most actually can't afford. So you end up with basically nonsense like van life, people sleeping in their cars, homelessness etc, because as soon as you build a permanent structure it becomes a huge nonsense.