[spothedog1]

Building new housing isn't about "giving rich people a cozy pad" its about allowing millions of people from geographically disadvantaged areas live in high opportunity areas. I grew up in a small farm town 3 hours from the nearest city so I'm just supposed to live there the rest of my life? I'm not allowed to move to a city cause I got a good job offer? Sorry but your attempts to dehumanize new arrivals isn't going to convince many people, what about the millions of immigrants who come to this country, are they just banned from living in areas with jobs under your scenario because some people already live there? You're still not providing a solution to this problem, you've just ignored it.

You also must have completely ignored my comment from above, if you don't build new housing those existing people are just going to get kicked out at an even faster rate if you don't build new housing. New housing acts as a sponge to soak up demand. The entire reason housing is expensive is because we don't build enough housing units in places people want to live. Your solution to not build anymore only makes it worse. Their rents will go up at an even faster pace. If you made building fast, cheap and easy then housing units at all price points would sprout up. Do you think if you don't build a high rise then wealthier people just go away? No they just look at the existing housing stock and buy up and renovate whatever is there. Houston has one of the most deregulated housing markets in the country and for this reason the average home hasn't gone up in price despite a fast growing population. You have to build to keep up with demand.

Renters and owners are different, in a gentrification scenario owners get very wealthy. Tons of poor families who own in poorer neighborhoods just received a massive cash infusion when a developer bought their parcels. Gentrification is one of the largest transfers of wealth from rich to poor in history. Your hypothetical of someone selling their house for a huge premium and then having nowhere to go doesn't bear out in reality, they've just become rich from selling. There are millions of stories of poor families buying cheap property on the outskirts of town decades ago only for that land to worth a fortune now due to development potential.

Renters on the other hand suffer the most from lack of building, you say when they get kicked out they'll have to pay more in rent. That's because housing isn't being built fast enough so prices are skyrocketing. When you have increasing demand and fixed supply, prices go up. The only way to keep rents stable is too build as much as possible. As for neighborhoods, places change. You can't keep them stuck in time for ever. Families move, economies grow, people age and we need to have solutions that adapt, not ones that pretend no changes are happening and try to keep everything in place.

So in short you still haven't provided a solution to people wanting to live in areas with jobs. These aren't rich people with vacation condos, these are people who come from areas without good jobs and want to live in areas with jobs. Please give me a solution that accommodates them or you're just plugging your ears. Trying to deny reality isn't a solution and will only make things worse.