The problem is that American housing prices have very little to do with actual supply and demand, but are valued almost-exclusively by their proximity to density. (i.e, "location"). The density is the solution to the physics problem, but that same density is simultaneously the root cause of the cost problem. Americans can't just build empty cities and have people move into them, until America stops financially punishing people for moving into those buildings.

It's not a "woke fear" of gentrification. It's simple fact-of-life stuff. Most Americans are either poor, or are one-or-two minor mistakes away from becoming poor (the so-called 'middle class'). Regardless of whether they own or rent, they all rightfully fear the explosion in cost of living, and are doing anything they can to get the gross financialization of living away from their own lives.

And, as most policy exists in the US today, if you increase density anywhere in the US, all housing nearby instantly becomes more expensive (regardless of whether wages are rising or falling, regardless of whether the population is growing or shrinking, regardless of any actual human behaviour elsewhere). People, rightfully, are scared shitless this will happen to them.

And they can't directly fight it, because it's literally federal policy -- comparables are how all mortgages are underwritten, and comparables don't care who actually did what, and are trivial to game.

Oh, this building has rents that are completely unsustainable for the local population? Who cares, they're on the market, so they're part of the "market rate" now. Oh, some rich guy got mad that Americans got a trivial amount of emergency cash during the pandemic, and is now ranting about "Fiat Currencies" and "Hyper-inflation", so decided to convert his spare cash into property to sit on it? Guess Mom and Pop now have to compete against him when home shopping, that's "just the way things are". Oh, this building got purchased at 3x what it's actually worth, because an investment firm panicked over getting caught shorting GameStop stock earlier this year and has nowhere better to park it's spare cash with zero risk? Comparables don't give a shit, every real human has higher rents and higher housing prices, just to make those specific people happy.

In a neoliberal Econ-101-only world view, all that mess "counts as demand" and must be "serviced by supply", just as if they were all real people needing a real place to live.

So, someone who has only taken Econ 101, thinks the fix is always as simple as "build baby build, it's just supply and demand, duh". They usually get their way (in every place that's not SF/BayArea), and then they wonder incredulously why all the real people left and no one can afford to live there anymore.

"I don't understand why people making $36k/yr won't pay $2k/month for our studio micro-apartments. I guess we just didn't gentrify enough. We'll just keep ramping up the gentrification, because that's what Econ 101 theory says to do. ".