Your assertion is that Government should tell people how to live
If you want to live in a single family home, go buy one.
But you should not be required to
If you can not afford one or single family homes don’t exist in your market (like Manhattan) you are going to have to live in multi unit buildings.
My argument is that zoning itself is illegal, it steals your property rights and gives it to the government where government connected cronies get paid off to sell your rights to someone else.
If you want to tell me that zoning should be outlawed in areas where everyone lives off the grid and with no need for access to public infrastructure, I'd agree with you.
But the primary purpose of zoning codes is to make sure that whatever is built does not strain the existing roads, sanitary sewers, and storm drainage. I can show you plenty of older areas in my neck of the woods that were developed before zoning codes were established. The first thing you notice is that congested roads and urban flooding are the norm.
I’d rather have zoning laws that protect me from watching my neighborhood turn into a sh!thole populated by people with no skin in the game. While NJ is notorious for its high property taxes, some wealthy people see it as the best defense against seeing their towns fall; non-productive people can’t live there, and there is no space available to build a welfare ranch. Another defense is outlawing overnight parking on the street; if 25 welfarians, braceros, or collies end up on your street, they’ll be sharing one or two cars - all that fits off the street.