My quick kaging tells me a plumber in Santa Monica makes on average $80k, and the average software dev makes $90. I think you underestimate how much skilled trades actually make. The parallel thread regarding unskilled labor (janitors) is more to the point. Even then, somehow, the building are clean even in places considerably more expensive than Santa Monica. I don’t think the homeless camps are filled with janitors, but I very well could be wrong. I know a lot of recent homeless are people simply priced out of being homed. A solution in my mind lies somewhere between razing every single family home and erecting massive Soviet style block housing across the skyline and disallowing any change to any structure.