You're right, I sure hate my ghetto fourplex unit. For the price of a condo I have a small yard and garden that doesn't take all my time looking after, three bedrooms, a garage, street level access, and all in an established character neighborhood close to bike lanes and breweries. I'd totally rather be living in a box in the sky with no space and be aspiring to one day own a suburban single detached home that I'll probably never afford. Plus I hate that it offers density within the existing city footprint and infrastructure, I definitely prefer either concrete towers or massive homes sprawling out into nature. Affordable in between options that provide reasonable living situations utilizing resources we already have are definitely not a fix and should be banned!
/s on the hating it part if it wasn't obvious, I love my fourplex unit. Sarcasm aside, in what way is this not at least working to part of the solution? It took decades of investment properties, corporate buying, speculation holding, population growth, with a dash of COVID inflation to get us in this mess. There's no magic bullet solution, so anything that helps and without any apparent negatives can only be a good thing?
Edit: words are hard
It's not a distraction so much as it's the bait. Gas cooking gets the utility serviced to the building, which enables the gas furnace vs electric heat pump conversation. Gas furnace is cheaper up front, so that's what goes into suburbia.
Builders and developers will always do the absolutely cheapest thing possible to stay competitive, and will only do better when they're either legislated to or consumers demand it. Home builders associations lobby to keep minimum requirements ... minimal, and most consumers just see pretty showers and big kitchen islands, so this is why we still build houses like it's 1980.
Always amuses me how many people care about gas mileage on a $50k car but couldn't give two shits if their $2m home is efficient.
Source: I'm a home designer who frequently has this conversation and that's usually how it goes down.