For the last fifty years municipal governments around the world have thought it really neat that they could control what could be built. They have relatively fe

For the last fifty years municipal governments around the world have thought it really neat that they could control what could be built. They have relatively few levers to pull, so they continuously added more and more regulations to what could be built, each time adding complexity, uncertainty and cost. And this went well beyond the canonical example of “we can’t have nuclear power plants next to daycares!”. They just kept going with their new and quirky rules. In concert with this they started adding fees, and then more fees and more fees onto construction. Development fees, parkland dedication, public art, you name it, they found a creative way to shove the cost into the price of newly built buildings. The housing crisis today is 100% the result of government, and now government is acting like individuals caused the problem by buying units to rent on AirBNB, or bidding the prices up too high (also due to government’s ridiculously low interest rates for too damn long!) It’s wild to watch inept politicians fumble around looking to blame anyone but their predecessors for the problem at hand, and in the process hurt a lot of people. The only answer is more housing, and it will take likely as long to fix this issue as it has to create it - decades. There aren’t enough trades available, material has skyrocketed and will get worse due to demand, and now interest rates are high which makes the economics even more challenging. Essentially, costs have risen faster than rents/sales prices and it takes a long time for either to move in the right direction.