If you try to take any local action that might lower housing prices or even keep them steady, you will likely be stymied by a large contingent of people that deny that new housing could ever raise rents.

The idea that supply and demand don't apply to housing is quite popular:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27397156

And the very few academic articles that try to refute housing supply lowering prices get a lot of press:

https://hellgatenyc.com/take-that-ezra-klein/

Even when it's not peer-reviewed and contradicts a ton of more serious research attempts, a bid of research which rarely gets popular press coverage.

It's like climate denialism, there's huge demand for denialist positions and very little research to back it up, so the press does not reflect the research.