The anti-growth crowd is often those who already own homes, so they're gaining from the cost of housing exploding.
There are few places in the country where houses are expensive, AND you can actually build housing.
Georgism?
The issue is that if every community does this (as they pretty much have) then anyone whose family didn't have property 50 years ago will be stuck with bad housing and anyone whose family had housing 50 years ago will be able to fund their housing.
Its a coordination problem. Clearly a small town may be sacrificing something by decreasing their own values with building - but if every town in the same country individually makes the optimal choice for themselves then the result for the country overall is not great for anyone.
This sounds nice, until you consider that "people who live in an area" is merely a proxy for community members, and a poor proxy at that. The people who work in an area are part of the community too, and should not be excluded from the decision making process. If towns can tax non-residents who work there, they can give them representation.
Madison for example said
"Allow the right [to vote] exclusively to property [owners], and the rights of persons may be oppressed... . Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property [owners] ...may be overruled by a majority without property.... "
Back in 1776, you could vote in the US. If you were
1) White
2) Male
3) Owned property
4) Were not Catholic, Jewish or Quaker
When Washington was elected in 1789, only 6% of the population could vote.
Even as late as 1850, some states (North Carolina for example) still denied the vote to white men (let alone anyone else) who didn't own property, and it was 1964 when the idea of paying to vote was finally outlawed with the 24th amendment.
Weird, so unlike them.
I've always felt like housing is the biggest indicator of inflation.
When you combine these effects you have an intergenerational wealth transfer machine that rewards existing home owners. The only reasons for home prices to rise as they have in the US are due to policy decisions, if these policy decisions never occurred the baby boomer generation would be unable to retire without changes to entitlements or improvements to working wages.
Meaning that if you gave me 10k in cash I'd just invest it in an asset that appreciates, so if you give me 10k in home equity, which is an asset that appreciates, it's almost just as good.