I think the point is that you can't ban houses through policy but you can ban golf courses. So like it or not (and I sympathize with your point), the policy knobs that can be used to curb water can only directly influence things like golf courses, but they can indirectly affect home water usage through utility pricing.
Reality is that if you are going to convert 150-200 acres of course space to residential, it’s not going to happen organically. A developer will come in and drop infrastructure and a couple of hundred homes, and then add an active HOA so folks feel good about that nice neighborhood maintaining their property values. That is going to likely demand a level of property maintenance that will work to counter any utility pricing soft control you try to impose.
I think the folks who try this ecological impact argument and want to push homes into that space just don’t think through all the consequences or assume there is a greater landscape effort than it actually takes. It’s a lot of work, but is it less that the combined work of 200 homes? Probably not. A couple of tractors vs 200 mowers? Landscape chemicals on perhaps 20 acres of the 150-200 (tees and greens, spot treat everywhere else) vs 3 homes per acre treating their whole lawn? 300-400 more vehicles driving in and out of the area everyday?
You want to outlaw them and let them go wild, I can accept that argument and can’t counter it but for “golf is fun and people enjoy it.” However if the concept that houses are better ecologically…I think that is a huge stretch.
