Canada

Volunteering is great (done some non-political volunteer work in the past) but in the re-zoning space local efforts are often de-legitimized by municipal politicians, MPPs, and MPs themselves. They don't want change; I've written to them and they've said as much, once they get through the obligatory "I understand your concerns" spiel. A lot of municipal council members are obsessed with single-family homes and are more than happy to give corporate builders exactly what they want.

Petitions are responded to all the time with empty platitudes, so I have no faith there; they're seemingly only for press attention. They learned from the UK petitions that responding with a nice sentence or two about maybe doing something later on gets the media off their back.

Until we have proportional representation at every level of government and a majority of representatives that are not also landlords, this will probably never change in my lifetime. An actual solution here won't be forthcoming, so all I have (other than complaining about how they always pull this do-nothing crap) is a tiny modicum of hope that the federal Liberals can commit to this small, incremental change and not fuck it up or water it down to the point where it doesn't help anyone and the Conservatives cut it in 5 years.