I will never forget what a ~55 year old anonymous commenter (I think from HN?) said once (paraphrasing): "for some of us who worked professionally through the PC and Internet revolutions, the changes have never felt that significant." Her/His point was that large shifts can go unrecognized if change happens gradually enough. Nothing more needs to be said about what homelessness on an American college campus means now or what it portends for our economic future. So, I'll just give one anecdote...
My girlfriend and I flew into SF last spring and our first Uber driver was an undergrad student who is attending community college in Santa Rosa. Asked him how often he would come to SF to drive for Uber, and he said he drives down each week for 3-4 days and just sleeps in his car. He said this as if it was normal, typical, acceptable, etc.
It's a nationwide problem in the most economically successful cities. For a variety of reasons, cities that became wealthy several decades ago have tended to decide that they have enough people. Having decided such, they keep any more housing from being built with the idea that this will keep people away.
Add in a couple more decades of economic development (and migration, and children) and a general disinclination to add more housing, and people being priced into homelessness becomes increasingly common.
I spent a while homeless in SF during undergrad. I would imagine HN's primary userbase is also in ultra-high CoL areas where rent can be $4-8k easily per month.
At Cal, dorming was also somewhat-questionable due to severe overcrowding, some people not being able to be guaranteed a room, lounges being converted into housing and still not having enough spaces. Of course, off campus housing was both absolutely insanely imbalanced in terms of pricing, square footage, and amenities. And safety.
My girlfriend and I flew into SF last spring and our first Uber driver was an undergrad student who is attending community college in Santa Rosa. Asked him how often he would come to SF to drive for Uber, and he said he drives down each week for 3-4 days and just sleeps in his car. He said this as if it was normal, typical, acceptable, etc.