>It ain't just about demand; it's about demand among those with reasonably-provable ability to actually care for a dog.

That's the problem. I don't have the same standard for what is "reasonably-provable ability to actually care for a dog" that dog rescue volunteers tend to, and I don't think they are better qualified to determine that. In fact I think that because of confirmation bias and their attachment to the dogs, they are the worst people to make that decision objectively.

>That's not guaranteed, or even statistically likely. If that were as true as you seem to believe, then these animals wouldn't have ended up in a shelter at all; they would continue to exist in abusive/neglectful homes, because obviously that's better than being in a kennel, right?

Your conclusion doesn't follow. It can both be the case that taking the average dog to a kennel for boarding is more stressful than moving it to a new home on average, and that some percentage of dogs will end up abandoned.
Many rescue organizations even buy dogs directly from breeders.

>The interview process is meant to ensure (with a reasonable amount of certainty) that the dog's not going to end up right back in the shelter (or - worse - not end up in the shelter due to a false sense of trust in an abusive or neglectful new owner). Making that "easier" for the applicant increases that risk.

What is that risk? I guarantee you rescue organization volunteers aren't using risk models to adjust the difficulty of their interview processes. They can just randomly decide that need to work from home, have a fence with at least half an acre of grass, have lived in the same place for 5 years, and have a perfect credit score--despite not knowing whether those things are necessary or even well correlated with dog well being outcomes.

>Even with that risk aside, the dog's going from being in a kennel situation (with a lot of other dogs and different people present) to being comparatively alone.

Dogs in kennels spend a lot of time alone in cages. Moving to a new home in most cases, the dog will get more attention, not less.

>It's a reasonably-intelligent animal that's prone to experience PTSD from neglect/abuse. Its well-being is more complex than just ticking off boxes, even for a dog that seems well-adjusted at first glance.

It's an animal that has evolved to read human emotions. This ability makes us much more likely to anthropomorphize dogs. There are complications, but most of the time it's well being really is just--did I tick off the boxes, does the dog seem fine, and does it have any disruptive behavior problems. This is coming from someone who cared for many healthy and not so healthy dogs through the end of their lives--including an 18 year old dog who was mostly blind, deaf and incontinent for many years (and someone who was responsible for caring for numerous litters of puppies when my parents ran a small poodle breeding operation when i was a kid).

>Sometimes they can be a bit overzealous, yes, but it's not like they'll permanently bar you from ever adopting if there are fixable issues with you adopting an animal at that particular moment in time.

Many of the problems that will bar you from adopting are things that aren't easy to fix. Like, you need to work from home, you have kids, or your yard isn't big enough.

>also consider worst-case,

That's the problem, rescue workers are suffering from a serious case of confirmation bias. They only see the results of worst case scenarios, they don't know what the average case is.