Building regulations yes, zoning regulations no.

There's a community near me that has enormous housing shortages and yet they maintain a 1 acre minimum lot per single family house only to "preserve character". Does that sound like a safety issue to you?

That sounds very unique, to the point of implausibility. Any community with a 1 acre minimum lot by definition doesn't have anything like an enormous housing shortage. That's rural density.

You're right, the solution has been fixed as of this April (which I didn't realize until I went looking - thank you!) But up until then, Lexington had a huge housing shortage and skyrocketing prices, with strictly enforced zoning which basically banned all new housing construction. Teachers in the local schools were looking at a housing situation where prices started at around 30x their annual salaries.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/13/business/with-high-co...

> Any community with a 1 acre minimum lot by definition doesn't have anything like an enormous housing shortage. That's rural density.

It could or it couldn't. It depends on how many people currently live there and how many people are _trying_ to live there, and how much is available for sale at any given time (e.g. real estate liquidity).

Houses being investment is the bulk of it. But what's absurd is that people in US think they have right to have the value of their investment protected. So they oppose any regulation that might influence supply or demand for housing in unfavorable way for them. And politicians treat them as if they have a point instead lauging in their faces and saying, the point of investment is that you take the risk of having a loss.

Look, public healthcare is socialism. Just invest and cover your health expenses from profit. Look, public pension is socialism that is subject to political corruption, just invest and cover your expenses. Hey, we are going to slightly nuke your investment values for public good, which may seem a bit socialist...

I'm partly joking, partly serious. The current state of affairs is roughly by design. At some point USA is going to be forced to have this conversation: how much socialism are we going to have? Are you going to deal with angry "homeless" or is universal housing availability so fundamentally good for society as a whole, that the government is going to enforce it some way, even if it comes at the expense of already housed?