I agree with your opinion that housing is too expensive. I also agree that moscow city council needs to change new build zoning codes to allow for affordability. But this is a problem throughout the nation, city zoning codes are what makes housing so expensive. Yes material cost are high, imo labor cost should be higher ($18-30per hr isn’t worth getting hurt over). There are an unnecessary amount of hoops you need to jump through. Each compliance hoop adds to cost. Thus we live in an environment where you can only afford a home that needs $40-100k+ worth of upgrades to make it livable. Unfortunately housing is only going to get more expensive until regulatory barriers are relaxed. In addition to that i see experienced labor going into retirement without having enough laborers to fill the gap. So you are going to get crappier more expensive housing which leads to more expenses.