TO READ SOME accounts of the reaction in Massachusetts communities to a new state law requiring them to create zoning allowing multi-family housing, you’d think the Sons of Liberty have again taken up arms in a heroic fight against the British overlords. 

“It’s an attack on democracy,” the Holden town administrator told the Globe in reaction to a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Andrea Campbell against the town of Milton after its residents voted to scrap a zoning plan that complies with the new state law. 

“When can we send somebody to jail?” a man asked at a Rockport meeting about the new MBTA Communities Law, according to the same Globe story. Another person at the meeting called it an “invasion.” 

While local opponents to the law often frame the showdown as a battle against big-government overreach – language that seems to draw from don’t-tread-on-me conservative thinking – what if they have the whole issue upside down?  

That’s the view of classic free-market advocates, who see the government overreach coming not from the new state law but at the local level, where a tangle of regulatory tripwires limits what people can do with their property. 

It’s hardly a new wrinkle in the housing debate. Two decades ago, the free-market-oriented Pioneer Institute developed a database cataloging the regulatory and zoning hurdles to new housing construction put in place by 187 Greater Boston communities. 

“We proved that over and over,” Pioneer executive director Jim Stergios said of the think tank’s report documenting all the ways local zoning rules inhibit housing development.

Despite that kind of research, the pro-housing movement of recent years has taken on a decidedly progressive bent. Nothing has underscored that more than the emergence of the so-called YIMBY movement, an effort driven by activists in high-cost coastal cities that inverts the not-in-my-backyard acronym associated with development opponents. 

The YIMBY, or yes in my backyard, movement has been driven by smart-growth advocates who advocate for changes that allow more housing construction. They see denser development in urban areas as a way to grow more sustainably and to address affordability by freeing up the market to dramatically increase housing supply. 

While the housing crunch has been most acute in liberal coastal cities like Boston and San Francisco, the housing shortage – and run-up in prices that it drives – is now reaching into all corners the country, and it is fueling a rare convergence of left-right thinkers amid the hyperpolarized times we’re living in. 

Since 2016, pro-housing advocates have gathered for an annual national conference. This year’s YIMBYtown conference, held last month in Austin, Texas, was notable for the prominent presence of conservative leaders. 

Here’s how the New York Times described the coming together of coastal liberals and heartland conservatives: 

“In addition to vegan lunches and name tags with preferred pronouns, the conference included — even celebrated — a group that had until recently been unwelcome: red-state Republicans.”

Speakers included Montana’s conservative Republican governor, who recently championed a state zoning law change to allow more multifamily housing and accessory-dwelling units. 

“These issues scatter the traditional left-right divisions,” said John Infranca, a professor at Suffolk University Law School who specializes in land use regulation and affordable housing policy. 

Jesse Kanson-Benanav, the executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, the state’s YIMBY affiliate, said the irony is not lost on him that left-leaning activists in Massachusetts championed property rights by pushing against restrictive local zoning that inhibits housing production. “The progressives are trying to expand the rights of property owners to do more with the land they own,” said Kanson-Benanav, who attended the YIMBYtown conference in Texas with about 30 other Massachusetts residents. 

Paul Craney of the conservative Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance offers qualified support for the pro-housing effort. “Generally speaking, we support allowing the private sector to have less hurdles to overcome, and that includes housing,” he said. But Craney argued that the state, at the same time, is hampering the goal of making new housing more affordable through “climate-driven mandates” that drive up the cost of new construction. 

People can argue over specifics of the new MBTA Communities law, said Stergios. “But housing production is the issue, and the state cannot just sit back and do nothing,” he said. The new law certainly is a “dictate from on top,” he said. “This is what happens when localities don’t cooperate in the economy and block production.” 

The battles here, where Democrats rule, often play out less along conventional left-right lines than in the tussle between state authority and the long tradition of strong local rule. 

As contentious as it has become, the new MBTA Communities law, which applies to 177 Greater Boston cities and towns, will hardly solve the regional housing shortage problem. Kanson-Benanav said that makes it sobering to think about the hurdles that would confront an  effort in Massachusetts to enact more sweeping statewide zoning changes like those highlighted at the Texas conference that have been passed in blue, purple, and red states. 

“It was really stark to see how much legislative progress there’s been in other states, yet it’s so difficult to get stuff done in our Legislature,” he said.