I wasn't talking about safety issues when mentioning red tape, but even those severely limit housing construction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sfoLUumGnc

Parking minimums are how we ended up with cities that are substantially composed of car storage, instead of housing which people need to live. There's little reason to force developers to build car storage when what people need is housing. People in cities get along just fine without a car, and it's possible to adopt a similar model to Japan that requires people to prove they have a parking spot available before they can register a car.

>Whatever the actual limits of the zoning are, that is pretty much what you see built.

Exactly, the limits are set very low, and so much red tape, that so little housing gets built, which is why we have a shortage.