[rm_-rf_slash]

Counterexample: you could live where I live (upstate New York) on a tenth of the cost of San Francisco. A homeless person with marginally employable skills that moved from SF to upstate NY could work and afford to live in a home with heat and running water.

But if people choose not to work, I don't see what makes them any more "entitled" to live in a city than the people who work to make rent and pay taxes to support the services the city needs.

[fatbird]

You don't earn an entitlement to live in a city; the city is obligated to justify excluding you from its area. In the U.S., vagrancy laws allowing police to generally run undesirables out of town have been found unconstitutional under due process analysis.

Everyone on the street is there for a variety of different reasons. You can't reduce it to choosing not to work.