Destroying Homes for Business

It happens all over the country. Rich developers want to get richer so they go through the city planners to get approval to get rid of homes in areas in which they would like to build businesses or an apartment complex or what have you. Usually, the home owners are offered more than the market value of their home. Alot of people take the offer while alot of others built the house with their own two hands or had the house in their family for a number of generations and there's simply more to the value of the house than money. In Colorado Springs, CO, a hospital was planned for expansion. There were a few houses that were going to have to be torn down in order to do that. Everyone sold their houses except one old man right in the middle of the planned parking lot area. He took the city planners to court and he actually won his case. Today, there stands in the middle of the hospital parking lot, this old man's house. Good for him.
What's really sad is that when someone decides they don't want to sell, sometimes they are taken to court and they lose and they end up with little or no money at all for their homes. They are simply kicked out of their homes and they are destroyed and some business complex is put up in it's place.
Just in the time I've lived in Colorado Springs, there was one housing area in particular that was destroyed for purpose of building a business strip. Some of the homes there were very old. Others were fairly new. I don't know the personal story of any of the people who lived there. All I know is that after only a few years of businesses running in that complex, it now sits empty with "For sale" or "for rent" signs on the windows. They've been sitting that way for a number of years now. Those people lost their homes for nothing. All in the name of "better development and the economical growth of the city". Do they really think that all those empty businesses sitting in the middle of a residential area are good for economical growth? Heh...I don't think so.