There have been many times, over student, young professional, research staff, and startup years, that I would've killed for what was effectively a clean, safe, peaceful, stable hotel room-sized place of my own.

Living in a high cost of living city (where the opportunity is), when you can't actually afford basic minimum housing, but manage to swing something anyway, often means a lot of sacrifices of what should be basics. And your finances are probably still getting strained, despite the sacrifices.

There've been times that converting a van or class B RV, and shifting it to a new city parking spot every night, seemed safer and more stable than bottom-end city apartment situations. I sympathize with and admire the Bay Area dotcom workers who managed to do something like that, in a recent HN post.

That said, we're seeing things here like new micro-apartment developments being pitched to relatively affluent new grads, at ridiculously high prices for what you get, with some lifestyle story. That seems more an investment ROI solution for the developer, not a housing and social justice solution.