“If more people wanted dense housing the laws would change” - This is not true. I do a lot of political organizing in this space. The issue here (SFBA) is that

“If more people wanted dense housing the laws would change” - This is not true. I do a lot of political organizing in this space. The issue here (SFBA) is that the zoning laws are made by the current residents of a small geographic area (neighborhood or city). The problem is that narrowing the universe of stakeholders that can influence zoning to “current residents” excludes a lot of people who would want to densify the area, mainly people who commute to that community to work because they cannot afford the home prices near their job. The people who are most impacted by these communities decisions to outlaw apartments are politically disenfranchised by the existing political structures. A great example of this is Cupertino, a city of 35k, which recently built the new Apple campus, which has room for 12k workers. The city of Cupertino did not build new housing for 12k new people though, so they take the payroll takes from Apple, and the sales taxes from the vibrant local economy these 12k commuters create, and exclude the 12k new workers from the benefits of their taxation (schools, parks, etc) through not building housing for them. We need to change the laws so the universe of stakeholders in zoning decisions expands from the current set of people who already live in a small geographic area, hopefully giving the power to a regional government or the state itself.