The political complication is that it's very easy for people to be convinced that the short-term answer is the only one that will ever be needed. Addressing long-term problems often involves painful choices that people would rather not face.
That's part of it. The "losers" with rent control are newcomers who may have a harder time finding housing, and some landlords. They're kind of anonymous. But turn up to a public hearing on building some new housing, and the people there to yell about it are your neighbors, ordinary people who "got theirs".
