They stopped it because players from those areas are gonna find it difficult to login to the game and keep their house, when their real life house and its associated computer, is, well...

There has always been a housing crisis. In my opinion, they should allow unlimited people to make houses, then just have wards automatically reflect active players within the last 30 days. That means your ward would change if logged in after being away for 30+ days. This would also mean SE would not have to run too many ward server programs, since they only need enough for the actually active players.

I believe they intend to revisit Island Sanctuary this expansion if they get round to it. My hope is they will use that time to let you build houses in it. They came so close to that with outdoor furnishings, after all.