When SE advertises "housing" with pictures of houses they set the expectations themselves. Defining if apartments are housing or not is fine, but it misses the point.

Apartments are incredibly small and don't offer the same benefits of S, M or L houses; you know, like the pictures in the advertisements.

Demand for houses seems pretty high if you look at the number of bids. Having a system that encourages players to make small FCs so they can participate in housing as advertised is eating up the lots they seem to intend for what is, in their minds, FCs full of players who can take advantage of housing as a group.

It just seems like bad decisions. For a relatively new player, not seeing any SE forum posts about housing (except a sticky one from many years ago?!?) is making me think ignoring popular issues will not do them any favors.

Encouraging players to give feedback here is also silly. SE does not interact with the forum community and the trolls are rampant (see OP) and just serve to rub salt into other's wounds.