It's really impossible to not view your house as an investment when you've been paying for it for 30 years and have hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in

It's really impossible to not view your house as an investment when you've been paying for it for 30 years and have hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in it. This goes double if your plan is to work till retirement, then sell the house and move to someplace more laid back. So really the local government needs to be willing to tell people to pound sand when they hold up new construction. But since the local government is made up of those same people that's not going to happen. It is interesting watching movies and TV just how often the "evil developer" trope appears. Always trying to buy the almost-failed gym/ski slope/TV station/etc... until the plucky underdogs win the contest to save their small business. Developers are never the good guys. They're always the evil gentrifiers who want to let hundreds of families invade the quaint little neighborhood with their high rise eyesore.