What are the reasons for the rising cost of housing in America? How can this issue be addressed?

For context, this is a question I answered on Quora

It is mainly a result of unmitigated real estate speculation which is an inevitable result of capitalism under a freehold realty ownership regime. The first thing that needs to be done before we can even address the remedy to real estate speculation is to remove the other forms of artificial scarcity that are imposed on land as de jure anti-density policies the most ubiquitous of which is single family (only) zoning which covers 70–75% of residential land in the U.S. and allows only the most lavish and wasteful use of land for housing, which inevitably people in lower income brackets cannot afford. While this is the largest hurdle to affordable housing it is not the only one. Others to consider include:

• Lengthy permitting and review processes for new construction artificially raise their cost and make final units more expensive thus requiring hire rent to be charged.
• Minimum floor space requirements in many jurisdictions make houses less than 1,200 or 1,000 sqft illegal to build. Tiny houses are illegal in many suburban and urban areas.
• Minimum lot size requirements make it illegal to put smaller homes on smaller parcels.
• Minimum parking space requirements reduce the number of units that can be built in multifamily housing. 95% of municipal zoning codes impose these on multifamily housing.
• these on multifamily housing. It is far easier to get an FHA insured mortgage for a single family house than it is to get it for a condo/apartment, especially if the building you are buying into has even one renter. This is not a policy most people know about unless you are a first time home buyer trying to buy an apartment on a modest income. If more than 15% of the building you are buying into is being leased you won’t get an FHA backed loan or even limited review FHA loan. So one renter in a quadplex will result in rejection but buying a single family house is a good assurance of FHA insured loan. This is one of several ways by which the Feds still subsidize single family house sprawl.
• The interstate highway system is by far the biggest subsidy for suburban sprawl. If we diverted some of the $62 billion spent maintaining interstate highway on public transit we could set the stage for a working alternative to car dependent sprawl.

There are other less noticeable but more pernicious ways that local governments kill the prospect of affordable housing.

Many single family zoning ordinances place an arbitrary limit on how many non-familial people can occupy a single family house, effectively making boarding houses illegal.

When Affordable Solutions to the Housing Shortage are Illegal (Part 2)

Cities will also sometimes cook up “revitalization” schemes and use eminent domain to condemn and raze existing affordable housing.

When Affordable Solutions to the Housing Shortage are Illegal (Part 4)

When Affordable Solutions to the Housing Shortage are Illegal (Part 8)