a one room affordable housing place in California is nothing to be sneezed at. But yes people who haven't experienced the real world somehow don't understand it, is what's going on (and no I'm not going to put those who don't have $500 in that bucket, they might be in the real world just poor).The bad news is we just heard from him and he's there and his transitional housing is not that great--a one room affordable housing place with a microwave and dorm fridge.
You can't make them understand what they have so little experience of, it seems like one should be able to just with logic, but it doesn't seem to actually work that way, like even though it should be, logic no matter how basic ("this is money coming in, this is money going out"), is no substitute for life experience, maybe because the denial becomes psychologically motivated. I think it's a whole phenomena of out of touch people this way (maybe not that numerous but they are out there). I think they have incentive to live in denial at a certain point, probably ashamed of their lives and scared of their prospects and can't face it.
But he's not as divorced from the real world as he could be, he has worked afterall etc.. That's the good part.