This is an extreme (and common) example of black-and-white vitriol on this topic. The reality is that it is very reasonable to highly desire a "neighborhood that is walkable and quiet and close to everything, where they have space to park their car and play with their kids in the yard", and often a person's dream is not even that whole set of features. This desire is especially reasonable if you have committed a lot of your life choices to achieving that dream. The dream is strong in part because this lifestyle was within reasonable reach across many parts of the country for so many decades that it became synonymous with the very name of our nation. On the spectrum of things a person can want, this is definitely not on the "selfish seeming" end where baser things like fame, wealth, and power reside. Just because it is becoming less and less attainable doesn't mean a typical human will suddenly switch to, "oh well, I won't fight for that dream any more then." Multiply that fighting spirit by ten for people who have already finally won the dream and see it being taken away. It will take a very long time for that cultural transition to finish, assuming we keep going in this direction. Economic pragmatism can only inform the human spirit so much.
That's one half of what you said. The other is how we feel about other people. You can chase or attain the dream and vote in a way that preserves the qualities of your community that you fought for, and still have sympathy for others who don't have that kind of community. There is no cognitive dissonance there. Critically, it's important here to understand that there is a difference between, on the one hand, new people wanting to live somewhere because of the current distribution of job opportunities, regardless of how much more dense it must become for more people to live there, and, on the other hand, simply needing quality housing, which is both a much more impactful and much more fixable problem.
Like you (almost) said, for the vast majority of the people you are criticizing, it has nothing to do with home value. People want to live and die in neighborly, safe, clean communities with what feels historically to an American like a "little bit" of room to exist, and not be forced out of their homes by large increases in tax. People really, really want those things. And that's a reasonable thing for a human to fight for, even if it's becoming less and less attainable as the image of the future continues to develop. I.e. you're letting the shitty situation provoke you into harshly antagonizing reasonable people.
