They aren't saying affordable housing isn't needed. Just that the method for making housing affordable shouldn't be trying to make the current housing supply cheaper.

And from this is where you get "rent-control is a terrible idea". Essentially: trying to artificially drive down housing prices in any way is generally inadvisable if you can just build more housing.

Sure that's technically an opinion, but it's one based in facts, and it certainly doesn't have "zero evidence".

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-eviden...

That's a pretty generous interpretation that requires you to believe rent control and building housing are diametrically opposed to each other.

rent control dramatically decreases the incentives to build and in many cases makes it impossible (read uneconomic) to do so

Blanket statements like this is the point of many of the above replies, it’s not a true statement with evidence. All rent control does not reduce the number of rentals, “more restrictive rent control”[1] [2] does. These nuances are important in the conversation.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105113772...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4904928