Several things, the majority of our lumber doesn't come from Canada. It's like 60-40 split in favor of native forests. While obviously not as much as Canada, the US has 10s of millions of acres of timberland across the west, south, and north east. So we're not dependent on canada for timber at all.
Second of all, it's more of a cultural thing. Same reason why our roads are bigger than European roads. A lot of European houses have existed for hundreds of years and the areas have sort of local laws that require new builds to "match" the older buildings to as to not take away from the local aesthetic. That kind of rule doesn't really exist here in the US, so when housing got more expensive, we turned to more affordable methods of building houses. I agree, that the cheap modern housing we mostly produce kind of sucks in comparison, but it's not like you CAN'T get a nice stick built house with superior materials. It's more than possible and happens quite often in nicer neighborhoods. Unless you're buying into some crappy subdevelopment full of cookie cutter McMansions, pretty much every "nice" neighborhood, will have mostly custom built houses with the owners choice of material. Brick and mortar is quite a popular choice in those areas, as is is reclaimed timber and log homes, as well as those fancy fireproof cement logs and "water stone" homes.
Most of those ugly (in my opinion) "modern" homes you see in california, Florida, Texas, etc. are also solid concrete pours and not plaster as well.
It's all about where you live and how much money you have. This isn't a US specific thing either, Europe is kind of Unique in how anal they are about housing materials. Japan for example, literally designed their housing industry to BE replaceable. When you buy a house in japan, you basically buy the land and demolish any existing structure because you're not legally allowed to live in it if it's over X amount of years old and you're not the original builder or inherited it. Their housing market is designed with replacement in mind, so their houses ARE EVEN CHEAPER and EVEN MORE INFERIOR in terms of materials to US homes.
But if prices come down, I have little doubt more people would obviously select the superior materials when possible.
Several things, the majority of our lumber doesn't come from Canada. It's like 60-40 split in favor of native forests. While obviously not as much as Canada, the US has 10s of millions of acres of timberland across the west, south, and north east. So we're not dependent on canada for timber at all.
Second of all, it's more of a cultural thing. Same reason why our roads are bigger than European roads. A lot of European houses have existed for hundreds of years and the areas have sort of local laws that require new builds to "match" the older buildings to as to not take away from the local aesthetic. That kind of rule doesn't really exist here in the US, so when housing got more expensive, we turned to more affordable methods of building houses. I agree, that the cheap modern housing we mostly produce kind of sucks in comparison, but it's not like you CAN'T get a nice stick built house with superior materials. It's more than possible and happens quite often in nicer neighborhoods. Unless you're buying into some crappy subdevelopment full of cookie cutter McMansions, pretty much every "nice" neighborhood, will have mostly custom built houses with the owners choice of material. Brick and mortar is quite a popular choice in those areas, as is is reclaimed timber and log homes, as well as those fancy fireproof cement logs and "water stone" homes.
Most of those ugly (in my opinion) "modern" homes you see in california, Florida, Texas, etc. are also solid concrete pours and not plaster as well.
It's all about where you live and how much money you have. This isn't a US specific thing either, Europe is kind of Unique in how anal they are about housing materials. Japan for example, literally designed their housing industry to BE replaceable. When you buy a house in japan, you basically buy the land and demolish any existing structure because you're not legally allowed to live in it if it's over X amount of years old and you're not the original builder or inherited it. Their housing market is designed with replacement in mind, so their houses ARE EVEN CHEAPER and EVEN MORE INFERIOR in terms of materials to US homes.
But if prices come down, I have little doubt more people would obviously select the superior materials when possible.