I have myself physically tried to build housing and can confirm that this is definitely the case. Zoning is probably the single biggest block to affordable hou

I have myself physically tried to build housing and can confirm that this is definitely the case. Zoning is probably the single biggest block to affordable housing in this country. I was raised in a construction friendly household, I have the ability to build housing. I saw there was empty land in my city that could nicely fit about 5 houses on it (it was a 5-acre plot). I noticed that housing had become extremely expensive in my city and thought well heck why not try to be the change I want to see in the world and try to increase the housing supply. Problem was that my 5-acre plot was zoned as “single family” which meant that I was legally allowed to build 1 house on it and not 5. So I tried to get the plot rezoned to a classification that allowed more than one house. Had to pay an engineer over 50k to create a plan for the city that was acceptable, including environmental impact study and drainage plans. The zoning board committee said they would approve 2 houses to be built on the site but didn’t want to allow more because they were worried there wasn’t enough public transport available in the area (even though each planned house would have its own garage and road access). And literally I’m not kidding one of the members even mentioned that he was worried about this zoning change being motivated by a desire to (in his words): “enrich yourself”. There are so many bureaucratic barriers to building housing in the US. Zoning is just one layer of bureaucracy that can be tens of thousands of dollars and years of back-and-forth with the city. There are even more layers with their own set of costs. Trying to actually build something is a radicalizing experience. It really feels the system is set up to intentionally limit supply and slow people down.