Or a bus/Amtrak ticket, and some money to ship your stuff. This is me, twice. It's not that expensive. It's not even painful. It's normal - what most people do.
> You will need first and last months rent (not to mention how will you find a cheap place in a city you have no connections in without being there?)
I have never paid first and last month's rent for deposit. Having dabbled in real estate, I do know this is a thing and not that unusual. I also know this is not the norm. I've often paid deposits of amounts like $200. These are decent apartments - not crap ones, but not high end ones either. I remember the one time someone asked more than one month's rent, I simply found a comparable apartment a few blocks away. It didn't require much of a search because probably over 80% of the apartment complexes in that neighborhood did not charge that much.
As for finding a "cheap" place, all it takes is the Internet.
> Telling poor people to abandon their social support system to move somewhere cheaper is really underselling how hard that is.
Both having done this, and seeing others do this from the now expensive place I live in: I can assure you the success stories outnumber the fail stories 10 to 1. Easily. Your support system in the expensive city is not much use if you cannot afford to pay rent. Your argument has validity if you're moving between comparable cities, but we're talking about people who are, in a sense, already below 0. The baseline sucks, despite whatever social support they have.
Of course, if you're starting with $0 in hand, you're screwed no matter where you are. Barring medical expenses or similar sudden expenses, most people who end up there do so via the boiling frog syndrome. The trick is to get out when you see that your finances are dropping.
Also, many poor people aren't starting with $0... they are starting with negative money
This was addressed in my comment - although perhaps I added that portion in while you were typing yours.
> You leave out having kids, and the childcare support that is needed if you can't afford daycare.
Definitely. There are many subtopics in this thread and my intention was to focus on only one, which was the expense to move to a cheaper city. With children, it's a lot more expensive, but to be frank, as per the original comment in this thread - you couldn't afford to live on minimum wage with dependents even in the 90's - that aspect has not changed and only gotten worse.
I was referring to a single person with no debt and a small amount of cash.
To be clear, I'm not saying anyone who is poor can get out of it easily (or even at all). I'm saying some definitely can. Nor am I saying there aren't institutional problems that make it harder for people and easier to get into debt (predatory advertising and loans, for example - heck - the whole credit system). In many ways being poor in the US is worse than in many/most developed countries. I acknowledge that.
But there's a difference between a bad situation and an impossible one.
I merely want to push back on a sentiment I see often on HN and other places (and usually only by people earning good amounts of money) that it's a bad idea or incredibly difficult to leave a coastal city to move to a cheap one and do better there than here. I see it time and again on these threads, and for me it's a huge cognitive dissonance, as I've lived in both places, and have encountered several people in both places who made the move. It's not easy, but as I said, the success cases far outnumber the failed ones.
The last set of people I know who moved from my city to a cheaper one were low income workers (cooks in a restaurant who were treated poorly). They had families with kids - some did not have a working spouse. They saw cheap houses in Ohio (under $100K) and immediately made the move. Granted, they're now living in shitty neighborhoods (the only place you'll find such houses), but they have positive cash flow. And now that they're successful, their so called social support they had here is now considering making that move as well.
My scenario in my original comment was about getting a decent apartment. I've seen people come in to the cheaper city I lived in with not enough cash to make any kind of deposit. Yet most were still successful in the long run. The exceptions were people with some kind of chronic problem: Drugs, health issues, crime related issues, behavioral issues (can't handle bosses) etc. They'd usually find some charity/religious institution who would provide them a roof for a fixed period of time and in that time they'd find a job and then move out to a real apartment. Most of these cities will have places that will rent you a room for fairly cheap. Crappy neighborhood, etc.
The contrast is with staying in an expensive city where no matter what they do they will not get positive cash flow. Whatever your views on the topic, keep this one fact in mind: The baseline we are comparing against is staying in a city with negative cash flow.
I was not disagreeing that SOME people can move. I am saying that it isn't blanket advice that you can give to every poor person living in a big city.
My main issue is that the advice to 'move somewhere cheaper' is often used as a way to dismiss the seriousness of poverty, that all it takes is some personal decisions and you won't be poor anymore. In other words, it is poor people's fault for being poor (because they choose to live in an expensive city).
Yes, there are lots of techniques that many individuals can use to improve their personal situation. However, that doesn't mean that we have solved the societal issues that are leading to widespread poverty.
Then, you are leaving your entire support system when you move. When you are poor, your support system is how you live. Friends watch each other's kids while they work, they share needed things, they find jobs for each other, they lend money to each other when unexpected things happen, they let people crash on their couch when they lose their house.
Telling poor people to abandon their social support system to move somewhere cheaper is really underselling how hard that is.