I don't mean to sound hostile but you're painting the Seattleites who came before you with a rather broad brush. I own a free-standing house in Seattle and I am
very much a YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard). So are many of my friends. We are fighting an entrenched mentality of "this is how it has always been and this is how it will always be," but we are winning more than we are losing. HALA, while watered down, is doing things like Mandatory Inclusive Zoning and requiring upzones around areas of transit infrastructure.
Yes, it's very slow going. But this is also a case of every time we "win," another 5,000 people show up with mountains of cash who can outbid everyone else in the region. Seattle is very popular as a place to live so we're trying to outrun both normal demand and the demand for housing that doesn't cost multiple thousands of dollars. It is a tough slog.
(By the way, Seattle has some of the most far-reaching renter protections in the state. Rent control is barred by state law but Seattle requires landlords to do a lot of things, provide a lot of notice, and limit rent increases a lot more drastically than any of our surrounding suburbs. Oh, and those suburbs aren't exactly building their own capacity, either. Good luck getting a large multi-residence project approved on Mercer Island or in Bellevue outside of the downtown core. Redmond is right out. Shoreline and Renton are doing better than most; Shoreline even pushed back against its own citizens to say "look, light rail stations deserve density around them so we're doing it, sorry nearby single-family homeowners.")