It’s based on the general preference to be in place X instead of Y. If you could get equally attractive jobs in lousy places Y, that would take away that factor. There would still be many other reasons, but it would help.
When I think of a world where housing is deregulated but jobs are scarce, I think of Victorian London as described in “London Labor and the London Poor” (or its amazing novelization, “The Quincunx”). It paints a picture of a huge city where all kinds of cheap housing are allowed, there are slums and shantytowns, you can rent a corner of a room for a penny, all that. But finding any kind of work is unreasonably hard (though still easier than in the countryside, which is being devastated by inclosures at the same time, so new people keep arriving to the city). And so our protagonists go gradually down, to worse and worse circumstances, with the threat of the street always hanging over them.
On the other hand, when I think of a world where jobs are abundant, I think of American historical novels. They’re also full of poverty, but it looks different. You see someone working a few weeks as a logger, then hopping a train with only the clothes on their back, getting a job on a farm the next day and so on. Some nights they end up sleeping under the bridge, but it feels temporary.
Maybe it’s not very serious analysis, but this is how things look to me. If there are jobs, the other problems will fall in line somehow.
It’s based on the general preference to be in place X instead of Y. If you could get equally attractive jobs in lousy places Y, that would take away that factor. There would still be many other reasons, but it would help.
When I think of a world where housing is deregulated but jobs are scarce, I think of Victorian London as described in “London Labor and the London Poor” (or its amazing novelization, “The Quincunx”). It paints a picture of a huge city where all kinds of cheap housing are allowed, there are slums and shantytowns, you can rent a corner of a room for a penny, all that. But finding any kind of work is unreasonably hard (though still easier than in the countryside, which is being devastated by inclosures at the same time, so new people keep arriving to the city). And so our protagonists go gradually down, to worse and worse circumstances, with the threat of the street always hanging over them.
On the other hand, when I think of a world where jobs are abundant, I think of American historical novels. They’re also full of poverty, but it looks different. You see someone working a few weeks as a logger, then hopping a train with only the clothes on their back, getting a job on a farm the next day and so on. Some nights they end up sleeping under the bridge, but it feels temporary.
Maybe it’s not very serious analysis, but this is how things look to me. If there are jobs, the other problems will fall in line somehow.