On Greedy Developers

 Developing housing is incredibly risky, and (successful) developers are incredibly risk averse, so they walk away from anything that even smells like it might not be profitable. A lot of people chalk this up to greed, but that kind of misses the point. If you are a developer, anything you do is with borrowed money. And if you borrow money, and can't repay it, no one will ever loan you money again, and your career is over, and your company is bankrupt. So, every developer is incredibly cautious to never let that happen. And the best way to prevent that from happening is to plan for projects that are incredibly profitable. That way, when things go wrong  is to have a project that is planned to have a very high profit margin. Lot of developers won't touch anything with less than 10% profit at the initial planning phase. It's not greed, but a rational reaction to being an investor in a high-risk context--only the risks with the highest potential reward are worth gambling on.

A useful contrast is the Good Samaritan who plans to build housing with 0% profit. When things go wrong (permits delayed, material prices go up, labor costs rise), the project doesn't get finished, and the half-completed construction is ruined, all the money is wasted, and no housing is produced.

Chatting with a not-for-profit housing developer, the way they do the analysis is not to build in explicit profit, but to make plans that everything is going to cost 10% more than they expect. (Not everything does, but when one thing costs 20% than expected, the project doesn't die).