Ya, the bottom in the developed world, and especially in California, is much higher. In china you can find a moldy room in an apartment building basement (no window!), or even sleep in the restaurant you are working in (many people live in their shops in Beijing, and I don't mean above them in something like an apartment!). For food, there are plenty of places that cut corners to keep costs down, you'll live but you might get cancer later.

Pre-Katrina New Orleans was popular because survival was similarly cheap, not for the same quality of survival, but the bottom possible was lower.

Actually, $2/day is actually completely manageable in rural India. I mean you won't be eating fancy stuff, but you'd be nowhere as miserable as being alone/homeless in the US.

You've got a pretty stereotypical view of the developing world.

Nevertheless, SF actually has pretty good services for the homeless. That's why there's a lot of homeless people there.

Given also that the median black household income in California is $35k, it sounds like you can actually survive of $30k in Cali without your kids dying of dysentery. Alternatively, if you want to 'scrounge crude shelter', there's 11 million square miles of public land in California.

In short, my eyes just about goggled out of my head when the response to "kids die from drinking dirty water" is "yeah, but they can live wherever they want".

>in many parts of the state, $30k/yr just isn't enough to rent an apartment and cover the basics

Oh no, I can't afford beach front property or a mansion in Beverly Hills on $30K a year? Poverty!

http://www.apartmentcities.com/Los-Angeles-Apartments/Los-An...

15 pages under $500 in Los Angeles.

>and worse off than poor in the developing world.

So you won't mind moving there and living on a local salary, eh?