Or are your houses deliberately built so that there is no great destruction and losses from hurricanes, etc.?
No, it's just because it's cheap for the builders, and not about quality or lowering the cost for people living in the houses at all. Houses like this cost hundreds of thousands of dollars - the average house price in my city, I just looked, is $568,178.
Some people say it's more eco-friendly to build with wood because it's renewable, rather than concrete, which causes a lot of carbon. But the developers building things really don't care about that, they just care about cost. They'd use concrete if it was cheaper.