It sounded like this particular family was doing ok until the wife lost her job when she was on maternity leave (wouldn’t happen if maternity leave were actually protected), so they started illegally subletting, and then they got kicked out of their illegal sublet. Yeah it’s clear they basically had no savings at that time though, other than the car.

I read the article a few hours ago but I think I remember them saying like a quarter of the kids in the Salinas public school system were homeless? I agree that in general, people should be responsible about having children. But let’s be clear: a quarter of a city’s kids being homeless is indicative of a deep systemic problem. That’s not something that we should simply accept as natural because they are poor.

Of course, the big issue which they touch on briefly is that the whole “affordable/subsidized housing” crap is not even close to reaching the scale it needs to be at to address the problem. You can’t solve a housing shortage by selling $10 for $3 to a couple thousand people.