As the cost of rent rises, so too does the number of homeless. As the vacancy rate plummets—meaning that the housing market is tight, with too many buyers and too few sellers—homelessness rises. The way to think about homelessness, they write, is to imagine a game of musical chairs. With ten chairs and ten people, everyone will find a chair when the music stops. That will be true even if one of the players is on crutches. With nine chairs, someone will inevitably be left out. That’s when individual life circumstances begin to predict homelessness. If you live in a city with too few homes,
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