zlacker

I was born in a socialist country, where people built houses. Literally, you built first, dealt with papers later, and pretty much everyone had a house or an apartment. Government and companies built apartments for their workers, people built private houses themselves, mostly literally (every weekend, wheelbarrow, few sacks of cement, a bunch of bricks, a few friends, a case of beer,...).

After a bunch of regulation, now, the "papers" cost more than materials to build, and most of the area is zoned as eg farming area, even though there has never been any farming there. Of course, prices have gone up A LOT, there is a lot of NIMBYism, by people who already build their house, and don't want another one next to it, and young people are basically fucked.

We might disagree, but in places with available land (and there are many), the only thing that stands between housing and non-millionaire people are (local) governments and regulations.