> Where exactly do you expect people without jobs, or with significantly reduced income to move to?

I mean I personally hope that the government steps in and helps them stay where they are, but that will also keep rents artificially high and would be a transfer of wealth from the treasury to landlords. So pros and cons.

Realistically what seems to be happening is people are moving to lower cost areas within California or outside the state, or moving in with family.

You've missed or failed to acknowledge the actual point I was making. I think any reasonable person would agree that forcing double digit millions of people out of their homes is a very undesirable outcome. Most of those people would agree that something needs to be done (exactly what being dependent on one's political and economic ideology). Many of those people would probably also agree that the government is the one that needs to do something, simply because almost all political ideologies agree that one of the purposes of government is to do things that private citizens cannot. Let's just agree on this, unless I'm grossly misinterpreting what you're saying.

What I'm actually saying is that you can't simultaneously agree that "people aren't moving to SF," and that "the market is fine, because it's a thin market and these prices reflect very few transactions." The latter is a consequence of the former, and the root cause of both is that people just don't have the money to move. This, in combination with the coronavirus eviction moratorium in California, leads me to believe that people aren't moving anywhere, not that they're moving to lower cost areas.

I hope I'm wrong, because unless the government steps in with something radical like a debt jubilee, those people staying in their SF apartments with no income and incurring debt are just going to suffer more down the road.