Agreed, which is why the mandatory single family home zoning that dominates most of America's residential land is such a disaster.
Mandating that anyone who wants to live in an area must living in a detached house on a big lot is terrible. Anyone who would rather pay less for less home is completely left out, by government decree no less.
Upzone and let the market cater to what people are willing to pay for, same as cars.
so the wants of those who wish to move to a neigh orhood outweigh the needs of those who are already there?
i have no love for the nimbys but its also not a win to turn a neighbordhood into a bunch of low rent duplexes. theres a differenxe between rempving restrictions for new development and using these changes to undermine the property rights of others.
The needs of society as a whole outweigh the needs of every single neighborhood saying, "yes we need housing, but please do it somewhere that's not next to me." Besides hurting local economies and people's pocketbooks, that just results in endless suburban sprawl, which hurts the environment.
The entitlement complex so many people have these days to mandate that to live in their community, you must control X amount of land, is simply classism, with economic segregation as the result: you must make this much money to live here. Working class? Get the fuck out.
And the real gall here, is that NIMBYs insist that the government be the one to enforce these invisibly gated communities, as if it should be in the government's interest to enforce the social stratification that NIMBYs so desire.
Cities are still too low of a government level, because cities can choose to reap the rewards of a booming metro area economy, while pushing housing supply and the associated growing pains onto everyone else. See: my native bay area, and its disastrous housing situation.
Bare minimum, you need to solve this at the metro area level. But since metro area governments don't really exist (at least in the US), it has to be the state. Which is exactly what's happening right now in the bay area (state law coming into force that's forcing cities to either adopt a serious growth plan that accommodates significantly more housing, or lose their zoning powers entirely).
edit: also note that this
> Individual neighborhoods can’t block a city-wide vote.
isn't really accurate. It's common to have zoning that allows for more housing on paper, but then the existence of community meetings that the housing commission or whoever listens to means that developers have to abide whatever the neighborhood residents at the meetings say they want, and sometimes what they want is no denser housing near themselves for any reason.
Just because you can build more on paper doesn't mean you can actually build. The US largely doesn't have "as of right" development rules. There's one set of transparent regulations that are put there democratically, and another set of opaque regulations that exist only in the minds of whichever locals are most motivated to show up to the neighborhood meetings.
Mandating that anyone who wants to live in an area must living in a detached house on a big lot is terrible. Anyone who would rather pay less for less home is completely left out, by government decree no less.
Upzone and let the market cater to what people are willing to pay for, same as cars.