Well there you nailed it on the head. There's a valid reason the NIMBYs don't want more housing: US city governments are traditionally very very poor at housing planning and companies use that as an excuse to avoid taking into account all the externalities.

I mean, you increase housing but don't increase retail units or parks in the same area, thereby creating a cultural/food desert. Even if you do, if you don't increase road capacity or install better public transit (which since it's usually at county level requires a lot of coordination), then you're simply increasing problems.

NIMBY is the simplest solution - often folks who end up in that camp have tried advocating other solutions and have failed at them because no-one wants to foot the bill for all the planning bits that make a decent (or even livable) neighborhood.