Homeless crisis is just beginning

Thanks to Wendy Lee for writing the article “Mobile homeless” (Sept. 21): The crisis she described has only just begun. Blue-collar workers across the nation are being forced to make a choice between working and not making enough to pay for basic sustenance, and not working, thereby reducing their income in order to qualify for public benefits, where they very well might wind up financially better off than by continuing to work.

This explosive upward spiral of food, transport and housing costs versus bluecollar (and lower white-collar) income is destroying the continued viability of the USA as a First World nation.

The people riding those Google and Apple buses believe their skills and work ethic are the reasons they’re able to make their monthly condo or house payments with enough cash left over to buy this week’s cool phone, electric cars, college funds for the toddlers and maybe a pair of San Francisco 49ers tickets twice a year. They could not be more mistaken. When this current tech boom implodes, those “valued” employees will learn their true value in this new America we reside in. They’ll learn very quickly that they were lucky, not indispensable, and not at all valued.

I grew up in the 1970s, and at that time, a guy who worked the counter at the auto parts store, or as a grocery store checker ... they could all get by. The percentage of their wages that went to housing, transportation and food was minuscule compared to what that percentage is today, and not just in the Bay Area, but across the nation.

Paul Domeier, San Jose