What are the vacancy rates in the smaller cities and rural areas? What are we doing to utilize the vacant units by bringing jobs to those areas? Is it really more effiecnt to build new housing rather than take advantage of the existing housing? Should we just concentrate everything in a few major cities and leave everyone else behind?
Sure, reducing zoning will mean less rules and people can do more things, like build. The interesting thing is that building mfh was only a small part of the change - a change that CA also made state-wide but isnt seeing much benefit from. The change that made the real difference was increasing density for apartments and reducing parking requirements. The rents for apartments dropped, but sfh values have continued to climb as population declines. Bringing me back to the preferences and distribution part of my original comment -affordability is mostly driven by preferences and distribution.
