You do have some power over what gets built. It's called the zoning process, which allows us to decide ahead of time which types of things we will allow or not

You do have some power over what gets built. It's called the zoning process, which allows us to decide ahead of time which types of things we will allow or not, so that people can plan and proceed accordingly. It's why we have laws that people can read, rather than just bringing everything before a jury to decide after it happens whether or not it was illegal. Deciding what housing can be built should not be like a game of Scattergories, where we all just argue about whether or not something is okay after the fact. Because the way it stands, only projects with high rate of return will be built--ie luxury housing. A 10% rate of return on investment might be okay for a project that takes one year, but if it drags on to 4 years, that's barely beating inflation. Time is money, and our process makes our housing more expensive.