All development is on a tight buget, and the staff you imagine cannot exist because they cannot justify their own existance. - No developer has uncommitted expendable funds.
You live in a dream world !!
All developers have people who take the development paperwork/plans/proposals through the various governmental hoops. In addition to fulfilling bureaucratic needs, they also lobby to ensure that their development is really built.
The developers also work hard to develop political influence. That is why the biggest campaign contributors in my city/county are real estate developers.
Citizens -- not activists -- who object to all or part of a development plan are at a huge disadvantage. Meetings are held during normal working hours, which makes it tough if you've got a job. Money is limited -- you have no political influence, and cannot match the developers ad-for-ad. The process is arcane -- can you pay a lawyer to help you through it?
It's just a fact, e-s: the developers have the upper hand. It's far easier for them to build, than for you to oppose.
You live in a dream world !!
LOL! It's a lot more real than the one you apparently inhabit.
I'm not actually against house-building -- far from it. And I'm strongly opposed to the cute-fuzzy-animal tactics of the enviros.
What I'm opposed to is Pave-and-Pack developments and strong-arm developer tactics, not to mention the immense infrastructure costs that these developments inevitably impose on the city/county budgets.
All development is on a tight buget, and the staff you imagine cannot exist because they cannot justify their own existance. - No developer has uncommitted expendable funds.
Out here, the developers building the multimillion-dollar personal baronies on select plots next to "open space" purchased on the public dollar do quite well thank you. Those developers who take care of the politicians can get land purchased at a discount from a former owner distressed by selective regulatory pressure or can obtain selective regulatory dispensation after the buy.
The tight margins are more common to the lower middle class housing sector. It is the middle class who is getting screwed for selling out their own interests in order to prevent "sprawl." In terms of new housing, they get a choice of either buying cardboard tract houses on some island patch and then drive forever to work OR pay a fortune for Sustained Development Tenements next to public transit that usually involve some government subsidy, complete with HUD beneficiaries for neighbors.