Why this convoluted scheme instead of the obvious thing staring all of us in the face: build more housing!!! Huge swaths of the CITY are lots with single family

Why this convoluted scheme instead of the obvious thing staring all of us in the face: build more housing!!! Huge swaths of the CITY are lots with single family homes and even the prime water-front real estate sits as empty warehouses and parking lots. There's a lot we can do to make the city affordable just by giving people more housing. Housing prices go up when more people want to live there than there are houses. Why are we all overlooking this extremely basic fact??