Building products like insulation and roofing are often manufactured domestically because safety and building codes vary significantly country-to-country. This makes it more practical to produce goods closer to the end market where they will be used, rather than exporting a standardized global product.

Arizona struggled to permit new fabs because the 1970s Clean Air Act, designed for high-emission industrial areas, created an 'offset' problem in the low-emission state. This highlights how outdated regulations can unintentionally hinder critical modern projects, even those with broad political support.

Traditional lime mortar wicks water out of bricks and flexes as thick masonry walls expand and contract. Modern cement mortar sets faster and is stronger, but its rigidity and impermeability prevent natural movement and water dissipation. Consequently, building movement causes severe cracking across wall faces, while trapped moisture freezes, expands, and hollows out historic bricks behind rigid mortar shells.

A surprising factor in the housing crisis is the construction industry's long-term decline in efficiency. Fed President Austan Goolsbee states that for the last 40 years, productivity in construction has been negative, partly due to an industry dominated by small-scale operations that lack scale.

As skyscrapers adopted steel skeletons—exemplified by the later wing of Chicago's Monadnock Building—brick ceased being the primary load-bearing element. Instead of carrying structural weight, bricklayers were relegated to enclosing steel frames for fireproofing or applying exterior brick as decorative veneer. Once relegated to a decorative material, brick was freed from structural requirements, allowing modern architects to treat it as an aesthetic statement rather than a foundation.

After the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, the city urgently needed to rebuild. Although local glacial clay was full of stones and limestone that produced pitted, soot-absorbing bricks mocked nationally as the country's ugliest, brickmaking machinery enabled manufacturers to press 36,000 bricks per hour. Driven by intense post-disaster urgency, Chicago rebuilt itself using whatever clay lay right beneath its feet, regardless of aesthetic flaws.

A significant, overlooked driver of housing unaffordability is that the construction industry has become less efficient over time. Fed President Austan Goolsbee notes that construction productivity has actually been negative for the last 40 years. Unlike other sectors that innovate, we are getting worse at building, which directly contributes to higher costs.

Contrary to most industries that see technological gains, housing construction has become less efficient. This stagnation is a key, often overlooked driver of housing affordability issues, as the fundamental cost to build has not decreased with technology.

Chicago's Monadnock Building, the world's tallest pure masonry skyscraper, reached 16 stories without steel by building load-bearing walls six feet thick at the base. To achieve its smooth, unornamented curves without chiseling on site, manufacturers crafted hundreds of specialized brick molds and meticulously regulated kiln temperatures to maintain uniform color, illustrating the immense material precision required to build skyscrapers exclusively out of brick.