What about the doctors he talked to who just moved to Oakland and are saving up to get an apartment? What about people making $11/hr serving coffee and can’t ge

What about the doctors he talked to who just moved to Oakland and are saving up to get an apartment? What about people making $11/hr serving coffee and can’t get more than 20hrs wk because the boss doesn’t want to pay benefits? Or the school teacher making $42k/yr? If rent is $3k/mo a lot of people get squeezed out. Sure there are people who can’t cope and can’t function, but we regularly pay people far less than it costs to live, and that is the leading cause of homelessness. And even the people with fragile mental health or substance addiction are far more likely to overcome those issues if they have housing stability.(see the housing first initiative in Utah for evidence) What’s the answer I hear you asking? Build. More. Housing. Housing prices in the Bay Area go up 15% a year. More people move here than we build housing by a factor of 3. Pop quiz from Econ 101. What happens when demand grows at 3x the rate supply does? Since we’re not stinkin commies we probably don’t want to say people aren’t allowed to move here, so the supply side of the equation is all we have to work with. Many cities have figured this out. Pick the most successful one and copy it. Take a look at Vienna for starters. I leave that research as a task for the reader (it’ll be fun trust me) Without drastic intervention on the housing supply side the problem will continue to get worse as we continue to squeeze the most vulnerable people out the bottom of the housing market.