Almost nowhere in the US has a truly liberal zoning system. Houston kinda sorta. Where are you referring to?

I suspect that we disagree on what constitutes "overbearing" regulations. Fair enough.

Zoning should keep 1) noises 2) smells and 3) dangerous things away from where people live and schools and such. Not keep a 6-plex out of a neighborhood with luxury single family units. Or stop people from building on 1500 square foot lots.

I couldn't even build a simple 10x10 deck 12 inches from the ground without having to perform $8,000 worth of work to pour concrete piers and do several other destructive things to existing structures that make no sense.

This was for a deck that was going to be used by 1-2 people at a time, that could be built for $1000 worth of materials.

Same thing doubly applies for housing, except the numbers are 10-50x higher, because Karen in Bumfuck Permitting Services can't fathom that it's not necessary to build a single family dwelling up to Fort Knox standards, especially when it's made out of sticks and drywall anyway. It's almost like the code is designed to be especially convoluted to be a make-work program for local contractors.

From what I understand Wyoming outside the cities may be the closest to what you want, there’s basically rules about setback and not much else.

Yes, I'm aware that moving out of city limits tends to relax the building code & zoning a little bit. Planning to do that eventually.

But it was just an example of a thing that can contribute to rising construction/housing costs. I don't think it's particularly helpful to tell a young person "whoopsie, we could have built housing for you, but thanks to the last 10 recent code updates, the house is now 2x as expensive and you can't afford it".

Houston is on multiple "places with the worst housing shortages" lists, something I wouldn't expect if zoning was the only/majority cause of the problem.

Houston is gaining hundreds of thousands of people. They need to build even more to keep up.

How is that possible? Houston has some of the most lax zoning laws in the US. If housing shortages are caused by zoning laws, why does Houston still have a problem? Is it possible that housing shortages are caused by more than just zoning?

One city cant overcome the shortage the rest of the country creates. People are moving to houston because it is among the cheapest big cities because theyre actually building new housing. Houston is working on catching up with demand but it takes time. We have underbuilt for decades, this isnt something that can be solved instantly.

Any idea why, though? If these places have fairly easy, quick processes to get new construction greenlit, why is no one building there?

At least where I am it’s relatively cheap and easy (usable land goes for $10k, permitting, etc is $20k) and they’re building and selling.

About three or four builders, but not many more.