The answer is very location dependent, and often multifaceted. However here in Canada it’s a combination of neglecting affordable housing construction for decades, a huge uptick in immigration raising demand in some areas, a total lack of political willpower (most of our MPs report housing income, many actual landlords), and an economy that’s over-leveraged on real estate in general.
Honestly, it’s just another shell. Both Bash and ZSH happen to be mostly POSIX compliant, so stuff that works for Bash tends to work with ZSH too. For me it’s mostly just about the stuff I can add to it - I use the antidote plugin manager to get additional autocomplete, syntax highlighting, suggestions, async prompt updates, that kind of thing.