[bluGill]

Building homes does not take very long if the regulations allow it. Most of the US needs to take a hard look at regulations. Often the problem is regulations won't allow a small house and so the homeless are forced on the street because they can't afford anything.

[mind-blight]

Onerous regulations and process are a huge part of the problem. I looked into building a small apartment complex with a local developer in the city. It was zoned well, but the entire surrounding neighborhood had dirt roads. After talking with the city planner we found out that:

1. We'd need to pay 5k get a price estimate for all of the permits we would need, and

2. That we would need to either pave a road along the property (which would immediately fall apart from erosion since it would be the only paved road for multiple blocks), or pay $400k for the right to not pave the road

At that point, we stopped even trying. There's no way to build affordable housing in a timeline manner in that city.

[cvwright]

Often the regulations are the start of the problem.

I remember reading an article in Portland that the city was expecting N new people to move there in the next 10 years. So they approved construction of housing for N-200k people.

They intentionally set things up to push the poorest and most vulnerable 200k people into homelessness.

[bluGill]

Approving construction at all is a problem. Better a useless carwash ever block than not being able to build what you want.