And yet, people keep coming to San Francisco, LA, and other cities because there is work there. You can't look at housing costs divorced from other costs of liv

And yet, people keep coming to San Francisco, LA, and other cities because there is work there. You can't look at housing costs divorced from other costs of living, either: for example, moving to places that are "dirt cheap" in housing will likely come with a reduction in income as well as a rise in other costs. Replacing mass transit with an car-required lifestyle is expensive (and if you can't afford rent, it's somewhat likely you won't be able to afford a car, insurance, etc.). Additionally, an important factor in most of these cases is that they have some amount of debt, perhaps significant. So even if they could be marginally better off if they reduce income by some and reduce costs by enough where they can afford rent in a cheaper place, their existing debt doesn't shrink and becomes effectively unpayable over any period of time. In short, yes, the real proposal is to build so much new housing that rent drops by over a thousand a month. There's very few places in the country where that wouldn't be a great idea, not just in California... even those "dirt cheap places to live in this country" aren't dirt cheap anymore, things have changed quite a bit in the past few years.