Where I live, housing cost is directly proportional to school district quality - and local school funding (vs. state-level funding) is a significant cause of inequality.

Rapid growth of cheaper housing in a town is a financial challenge for the town because it creates a larger student base without creating a meaningfully larger tax base. In towns with a commercial tax base, the costs increase more than the tax base; in towns without a commercial tax base, taxes typically increase on the oldest / most established residents - which drives fixed-income people from the homes and towns they supported for decades.

In my suburban area, there are two main arguments to anti-growth zoning: (1) people don't want the density increase; they built lives in a less-dense area by choice and want to see that choice preserved. (2) There are legitimate school funding issues and tax base issues that encourage controlling the rate of growth.

I'm dubious of _any_ argument that finds a singular cause for housing prices. It's an extremely tangled and complex issue that touches on taxation, local control vs. state control, education, property rights, politics, a cyclical capital-intensive industry, immigration and labor supply, interest rates...

Personally, I vote for denser housing and more liberal residential zoning. But I also understand and respect the opinions of my neighbors who disagree. Looser zoning gives control of land-use to capital and takes that control away from the people who built and sustained the town for, sometimes, generations.