--all the while lamenting the lack of affordable housing.

So long as politicians can get some people's votes by publicly feeling their pain when it comes to housing costs, and other people's votes by restricting the building of housing, they can have a winning coalition at election time, which is their bottom line.

Moral melodrama is where it's at, politically.

Too "Complex"? [Part I]
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/05/13/too_complex