And when they want to put it in your (literal) back yard, your property is foreclosed by the city, often for a tiny fraction of the actual market value of your property. Once that occurs - you have two choices - you take it or you put up a lot of money and fight it in the court systems.
In the grand scheme of things, screwing over one person (or one family) could be considered to be OK, given the benefit to the city as a whole. But, having gone through this with my parents in a stupidly small town (40k), I can understand why anybody doesn't want it in their back yard.
And ultimately, they're the tax payers and voters for that city. What they want is valued more than what outsiders want for their city.
> And ultimately, they're the tax payers and voters for that city. What they want is valued more than what outsiders want for their city.
Yup, this is a big part of the problem. Potential residents can't vote, so you end up with a tragedy of the commons kind of situation: everyone agrees that someone ought to make more housing, but they all want someone else to handle it, and leave them alone.
It's not entirely unlike homeless shelters. People agree that they should exist, just never in their own neighborhood. Because, y'know, eww.
The solution is to have policy dictated at a higher level of authority that can avoid regulatory capture by hyperlocal interests. A zoning board that operated at the regional level would have fewer problems than cities or neighborhoods making these decisions.
In the grand scheme of things, screwing over one person (or one family) could be considered to be OK, given the benefit to the city as a whole. But, having gone through this with my parents in a stupidly small town (40k), I can understand why anybody doesn't want it in their back yard.
And ultimately, they're the tax payers and voters for that city. What they want is valued more than what outsiders want for their city.