Answer: Why don't people move to an area that is more affordable before they become homeless?

For context, this is a question I answered on Quora

This question fails to grasp the basic reality of life and economics. If everyone who could barely afford the expensive big cities rushed to the less expensive ones the demand pressure on real estate would just makes those expensive. Low rents/property values are usually a signal of fewer job/business opportunities and lower household income levels which itself is usually a sign of lower education levels. Millions of working poor struggling in expensive big cities moving to cheap podunk nowherevilles isn’t a fix; it’s a non-starter. The capital (a factory, plant, store etc) always has to come first; a bunch of penniless proles randomly showing up in an affordable town aren’t going to suddenly create more job opportunities just by their mere presence just more congestion. The so called affordable places don’t have the resources to handle a sudden influx of millions of working poor from expensive big cities. At best this can only ever be an individual solution that works better if fewer people pursue it but even then it is still fraught by a catch 22. You need an address to apply for a job. That’s one of the most basic things an employer asks applicants because they are screening for 1) do you actually live in the area where you would be expected to work and 2) do you have reliable way to get to and from work daily. A transient poor person who just shows up in town one day has neither of those things. You also need proof of income to apply for a rental. That’s one of the most basic things a landlord asks applicants because they are screening for do you actually have the means to cover rent. No job, no permanent residence: no permanent residence no job. You can use a shelter address, if one exists in this theoretical affordable town, but that doesn’t signal permanence and reliability to employers, so unless you have some exceptional talent the rest of the applicant pool doesn’t you are getting skipped over. Also not having a college degree is still rather stupidly used as another shit test by employers to screen out undesirable applicants even when the job doesn’t require a specialized degree to do competently.

And even when the capital exists to employ labor trying to migrate from the expensive big cities to more affordable ones the assholes who disingenuously ask this question are the first to resist any change to their landscape and demand their county/city council nuke any multifamily housing that could reasonably accommodate the people who would work for the big employer. Examples abound, but a Montana town literally killed their largest employer just to keep their landscape the same.