If people didn't want housing there, it wouldn't be built. If they didn't want the exemptions to be codified, then they wouldn't be.

The only way your statement makes sense is if you restrict "local" to a sufficiently small subset of the people (a town? A block? One single address?), but in that case, a greater number of people within a greater definition of "local" seem to disagree.

If the state gifts a locality power to impose zoning restrictions, then the state can usually alter (or withdraw) that gift when it stops being beneficial to the people of the state, even if a small subset of those people living in that one locality don't like it.