Comment by JuniperMesos
4 days ago
Incumbent homeowners (and sometimes renters in rent-control situations) voting for policies that prevent new housing from being built near them is a huge reason why housing costs so much where I live; and reducing local housing costs is probably the single biggest way that policy changes could directly improve my quality of life.
Also, housing itself is often a genuinely noxious use of land for incumbent homeowners. In part because construction creates noise and dust and requires upgrading other local physical infrastructure - but also because more housing implies more new people living in an existing neighborhood, and additional people living somewhere can themselves cause problems for the incumbent residents.
This is a little oversimplistic.
Developers share an enormous role in this problem. They want to enshittify nice places to live with overdevelopment, because people with lower standards want to live there - which is perfectly fine. But they could happily live in residential zones built outward instead - however, that doesn't get the developers as much money, so they don't.
This is an explicitly anti-density, pro-suburban-sprawl housing policy proposal. This is basically the opposite of what transit-oriented urbanists would like to see.