yes, shockingly, housing is expensive because too many people (usually people who already have a place to live) oppose the building of new housing.
Here's the argument in plain terms.
In the market for cars, we have both expensive cars and cheap cars. Why is that? Because it is profitable to produce cheap cars, so rich pricks can buy Mercedes and regular folk can buy Hyundais. I'd rather get rid of cars altogether and force people to use (and spend money on) the tube and busses, but there you go. It's a functioning market where both privileged and less privileged people are served, because it's profitable to manufacture cheap cars.
In the market for housing, we only have expensive houses because it is not profitable to build regular housing (that would be affordable for normal people). It is not profitable to build regular housing because it is inordinately difficult to get planning permission, it is impossible to get the support of local residents (who are the privileged ones who already have access to housing), and the process of getting to the stage where you can actually lay a brick costs millions. The barrier to entry of building new housing is so high, to recoup their costs, only massive developers can afford to go through this process, and they need to sell/rent whatever they've built at ludicrous cost because their barriers to entry in terms of cost and the built in uncertainty of the success of any given plan is so high.
The ONLY way to have housing not be stupidly expensive is if the market price of housing is affordable for a regular person. Any other solution means that reasonably priced housing is a lottery. That means drastically increasing the supply. Housing abundance is the goal.
Make it so easy to build that every segment of the market is served - cheap housing as well as expensive housing (just like cars). Flood the market with housing supply until the price gets to a point where its reasonable.
So yes, that probably means tall flats and cookie cutter apartments that block your precious views. I'm also sure many of the local residents will complain about a variety of other things that adversely affect their property values.
Local residents blocking absolutely any new plan of anybody building anything is exactly the reason why the only things that end up being built are luxury apartments for the wealthy.
You are one side of the vicious circle that's permanently locking out an entire generation from any hope of stable housing.
