Realistically, they are simply the shells in which we create our lives.

That’s the view of John Archer, author of The Great Australian Dream.

“The houses we remember with the most affection are usually those in which we were happy,” he wrote.

They aren’t those houses that look especially grand or good.

It’s the people that give the houses character and life.

Albury-Wodonga has many styles of homes.

But I wonder sometimes whether some people who prattle on about neighbours’ houses have ever been anywhere else on the planet.

A “not-in-my-backyard” protest has arisen about yet another proposed slightly unconventional development.

Like other recent protests in central and East Albury, it’s linked to something different being “bad”.

Resistance to change is usually emotional.

People fear their properties being “devalued”, which underlies a suspicion that the “wrong” sort of people will become neighbours.

What else is that except snobbery?

How did this extraordinary idea arise that only people of similar character and habits (and mortgages) should live in the same locality?

Look at a couple of popular streets in central Albury.

Wyse St has a large house that sold recently for $1.8 million and several cottages of similar vintage.

It also has modern public housing between Wyse St and the old barracks site, on which $800,000 homes are going up today.

At Crisp St, there are lovely Victorian Italianate and Edwardian villas, interspersed with homes of almost every decade from 1910 to 1980.

Builder Garry Morgan is now revamping the 36 public housing units in Crisp St into 25 double and single-bedroom units.

Crisp St is a cross section of city housing and people.

If the sort of protests we are now hearing about “not of character”, and “slum” were around in 1979, these would never have been built.

Opposition to the town houses in East Albury this year brought out neighbours will all barrels firing.

They screamed about loss of privacy, design, traffic, garage dominance, security, devaluation, pollution, stormwater, overshadowing and (can you believe this?) noise from a swimming pool and barbecue area.

Councillors listened to all this, cast aside staff advice and rejected the project.

The same councillors had thrown out Dennis Family Homes’ development of the barracks site after almost identical complaints.

Had the Defence Department been more community conscious, it would have sold the barracks to the council or state government for a housing development that would have provided homes where the greatest need was.

That could have been modest homes for aged or single people.

Defence made the same mistake as the NSW Health Department did when it put dollars ahead of community needs at the old base hospital site.

I haven’t written this to defend the manufactured homes estate proposed at Kemp St, Lavington.

But this community needs choice in housing.

A city’s housing needs are constantly changing, and there is a trend towards medium and high density housing.

Not everyone can afford a traditional house or needs three or four bedrooms.

Indeed, a third of Albury citizens live in rental housing.

More people are living alone.

And if you haven’t heard, the cost of housing is going up and up.