And stop allowing people who view their house(s) as an investment from being able to veto any and all building. While that incentive is present, there will be massive hurdles to being able to build the amount of housing that is necessary.

To be more specific, I dont think owning a sfh to rent out should be good. But building an apartment complex should be a good investment. Unrestrict building, and tax underutilized land.

Investment certainly feels like a problem. The amount of completely empty homes in my area (coastal ca) is disgusting. There are entire real estate brokers that specialize specifically in investment - these people aren’t even pretending that their clients will use the house, they may never even step foot in it.

Meanwhile economic stratification continues and the other side finds it increasingly difficult to make the down payment.

The issue is that housing should not be an investment but due to rising labor and materials costs and also more restrictive code, they are now an investment.

Get rid of property tax or somebody below a certain income.

This is just wrong. Western economies have largely been hollowed out from productive output in favor of hoarding land and property because there is inelastic demand and increasing prices has become a political goal.

It should be super expensive to own more than one house. This by the way is what China did where Xi Jinping famous said "houses are for living, not for speculation" [1] as he quietly popped the real estate bubble a decade ago.

Increasing house prices are just enriching the already rich and stealing from the next generation. Nothing more. Houses should depreciate in value. They should not be an asset class.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houses_are_for_living,_not_for...

And when "Just build more" doesn't work because private builders have no incentive to build a million dirt cheap starter homes for a mediocre profit and instead focus on building a few mcmansions?

We have a lot of building going on where I am. It's all for $500k homes. Nobody builds cheap one or two bedroom homes on tiny plots of land because the target consumer is more constrained and therefore far less profitable.

So much of the problems in the US right now is that capitalism optimizes for maximum profit, not any profit. It isn't sufficient in the US business culture to run a business that merely employs a bunch of people and produces things, because in the US, the "business" exists to be an asset class for the extremely wealthy.

So if the free market has no interest in serving people with less money than god, what do we do then?

I don't know why people believe there is a regulatory impediment to building a home outside of a city core. My dad is a contractor and he serves pretty much exclusively rich (gay) tech bros who fled california to increase our cost of living here in maine because nobody else can pay what they pay. His clients that don't fit that mold all inherited a good mid sized business or are well connected families. He does this instead of the plan he had a decade ago to refurbish or build about 10 new homes on a specific plot because it's literally twice as profitable at 1/100th the effort. Instead of working himself into an early grave, he can work 25 hours a week and live as upper middle class with his $100k pickup truck that is owned by his business.