The places with big homeless problems, like the Bay Area, certainly do lack affordable housing. And it’s true that part of that shortage is due to many years of

The places with big homeless problems, like the Bay Area, certainly do lack affordable housing. And it’s true that part of that shortage is due to many years of not building enough housing. But the best economic research I’ve read concludes with great certainty that no amount of building, not even the most absurd, wildly improbable hypothetical amounts, would do anything more than slow the rate of rent increase. A small studio in the Bay Area rents for 2400, at the low end. McDonalds is paying $17 an hour. Assuming you get 160 hours a month and pay no taxes, that’s $2700 a month. If you find a studio within walking distance of a McDonald’s, assuming the all of these best case scenario factors (17 dollar an hour wage, no taxes and a $2400 studio which you can somehow pay fist and last for), that leaves you $300 a month for food, bills and other stuff. To me, that’s not sustainable. And the key point, is that no amount of building, even the most absurd “thought experiment” hypothetical amounts, will move that needle. I will say, because of the loosening of zoning, more and more in law studios are being built in the backyards of the ubiquitous suburban track homes. Some of those can be rented for $1800 dollars give or take, which is the best thing to happen in terms of housing in a decade or more. But, many of those are substandard, and it’s another way for the landed gentry to exploit their prop 13 privileges and exploit the working poor. As much as I’d like to be happy about it, it’s hard to not see it as a sort of new feudalism. Anyway, I guess I just want to say it’s a problem, but one without easy answers. People are homeless for a lot of reasons, some of those are solvable. Housing prices however are the least solvable of all the myriad issues involved. Most people will have to leave, or get higher paying jobs. I choose to leave.