I believe you, my situation might have been different. I never had much growing up and never had good jobs until like my mid 20s, I remember it sucking to be broke but not being scary if that makes sense? You could usually find at least a shitty job and even a shitty job could get you some kind of apartment or room even with bad credit. Nice apartments had hard credit checks but there were independent landlords everywhere, so if you didn't mind the occasional drug deal on your block, it was like, workable. Now its all property management companies with what amounts to one computer system and if you don't like it? AirBnB is happy to absorb every last house, room, carboard box, and park bench.

And a shitty job is no guarantee of a shitty room now, you see homeless people still in the Best Buy shirt they were wearing when they got laid off, and Best Buy is nowhere near the worst job.

I thought working hard and being really good at computer stuff was basically some kind of bare minimum job guaranteed, that being free with my money might mean not retiring young. Didn't realize tech employment was war.

Wrong. Won't make that mistake again.

Ditto. Being broke has always been existential, and pretty damn scary even if you had family and other resources you could lean on. Nothing's changed about that, though particular industries/regions may get better or worse.