Our regulatory state drives up the cost of housing in numerous ways (zoning, arc-fault breakers, "look and feel", etc). Children don't hardly see their parents because they must drive long distances to commute, they don't get adequate supervision.
Our culture is what allows this to continue. We culturally don't demand excellence. We denigrate smart people. We refuse to have standards for raising children, leading to inter-generational idiocy. And now those idiots vote to keep making more idiots ("don't say gay", anti-abortion, no free BC, etc.) Regulation won't fix a broken culture.