> So the people affected by them are in a better position to change them if they don't like them
This is an oversimplification. If you look at the bay area for example and its housing crisis, the people who are most impacted are the people who haven't moved there yet but might do so in the future (and will pay higher future rents if housing supply does not increase). But potential residents obviously don't get to vote.
And that's how you get into a situation where people can't afford to settle down in their hometown area, even when they have good jobs.
The other thing you're missing is that you can easily end up with a tragedy of the commons type situation when local government is sufficiently fragmented. Again, this happens in the bay area: if the bay area was one city with one government, people would probably be fine voting for more housing supply across the whole area, but since it's split into dozens of cities, each one tends to suppress housing supply to boost local property values, instead arguing that some other city should be the one that provides more homes.
This is an oversimplification. If you look at the bay area for example and its housing crisis, the people who are most impacted are the people who haven't moved there yet but might do so in the future (and will pay higher future rents if housing supply does not increase). But potential residents obviously don't get to vote.
And that's how you get into a situation where people can't afford to settle down in their hometown area, even when they have good jobs.
The other thing you're missing is that you can easily end up with a tragedy of the commons type situation when local government is sufficiently fragmented. Again, this happens in the bay area: if the bay area was one city with one government, people would probably be fine voting for more housing supply across the whole area, but since it's split into dozens of cities, each one tends to suppress housing supply to boost local property values, instead arguing that some other city should be the one that provides more homes.