And minimum building standards are mindlessly being set by local municipalities, who frankly don't have the engineering competence to understand whether it's excessive or should be required in the first place.
Just mindlessly chasing "newer code is better", without understanding how it affects housing affordability. Or maybe it's an intentional payout to developers to let them profit from increased complexity?
A component of this is minimum building standards.
Homeless is a direct consequence of socially deciding that no new housing under certain standards (and therefore building costs) can be constructed.
If we were okay with building cost- and density-optimized cubes, we could probably solve homelessness in a year.
Instead, we've decided that it's better to have minimum building standards, with the side effect that some people cannot afford such a dwelling.