Imagine you are a well intentioned urban planner for a large city.

You have been asked by the city to choose a location for a housing project.

You chose:

Land closer to the center of the city. It is more expensive, but residents would be closer to schools, pubic transport, and other services.

Because of higher rents in better parts of town and other factors, you find that you cannot afford to house all residents on that land.

You decided to:

Continue with the project as planned

You continue with the planning process and begin building. However, new legislation makes it so that federal funding can only be used to increase the number of residents, not enhance living conditions. 

You chose to: 

Allow for an increase in the number of residents

Construction of the building is completed and residents begin to move in. The development quickly becomes overcrowded and maintenance goes downhill because you could change living plans to account for the increased number of residents. There are complaints from those who live nearby because of the deteriorating conditions, which are threatening to bring down property values.

You chose to: 

Do nothing.

The project continues to fall into internal disrepair. The city views it as a failure. Because it is located on more valuable land, the city decides that a better use of that land is to sell it to private investors. They say that they will allocate funds for another, potentially more succesful, project in a few years. 

The residents who needed public housing once again find themselves displaced and unable to find affordable housing.

End.