There’s growing recognition that aggressive housing development regulation — like the kind found all over the Bay Area — is terrible for the whole country. It’s a sign of how important zoning — once the most local of issues — has become to the U.S. economy that the Obama administration is now weighing in.

In a report called the Housing Development Toolkit, the White House upbraided the U.S.’s desirable metro areas for their NIMBYism: “The growing severity of under-supplied housing markets is jeopardizing housing affordability for working families, increasing income inequality by reducing less-skilled workers’ access to high-wage labor markets, and stifling GDP growth by driving labor migration away from the most productive regions.”

This is all true, and many of the changes, like increasing density limits and streamlining approval processes, that Obama suggests in the report would make things better. But these changes are likely to get a cool reception.

For proof, look no further than California.

Earlier, Gov. Jerry Brown offered a commonsense housing development proposal: Streamline the approvals process for multifamily developments that meet all local zoning rules and include affordable housing. The plan was vociferously opposed.

NIMBYism is a powerful force, unfortunately. But for Obama to call on America’s major cities to liberalize their housing markets suggests that this problem won’t be left unaddressed forever.