Right. What you have is what I call a “snob mob”. These are the very wealthy aristocratic elite who already own houses in these leafy, beautiful neighbourhoods. They want to keep everyone else out, so they lobby against construction of new housing to drive up their own home prices and prevent the poor and the working class from ever having a home.
This is happening mostly in über-progressive towns like San Francisco, but it's also happening in Vancouver. In downtown Vancouver and the ritziest communities of Toronto, they are blocking and lobbying against the construction of new, affordable housing with the effect of keeping their own property values up at the expense of the poorest people around.
Don't you think we could solve some of the poverty and equality problems if we got governments out of the way and allowed people to build houses?