The city is incentivized to increase housing supply, but the voters are not because their individual net worths are mostly in their home prices. Since a city is really just a set of geographically constrained voters, housing supply decreases.
In my city in California, developers are replacing old single-family homes with multi-family (apartments, condos, townhomes). It's great, it's needed.
Every time a new development gets started in our neighborhood, Facebook neighbor groups explode. The older generations hate how it's ruining the character of the neighborhood. The younger generations ask where the fuck they're supposed to live when prices are so high.
Thankfully, in the last few years it feels like the YIMBY voices are getting a lot louder.
> The city is incentivized to increase housing supply, but the voters are not
I have difficulty understanding this often repeated assertion.
I've been voting for over 30 years. I've never (to my best recollection) had a ballot question about increasing housing supply in my town. The town government is constantly approving (and sometimes rejecting) housing developments, but they have never asked me.
