in the city so what the Hell do they want people to do?

Move.

Or deal with long commutes.

Or live in substandard, affordable housing.

Or, if single, do what was common when I was a lot younger: Find a roommate to share costs. Where I live now people think that's insane, but when apt. prices are about the same as mortgage + escrow on a smallish house, having a roomie is a good idea. Thing is, most of the young adults I know assume everybody else is a thief, dishonest, etc. They really distrust their peers, except for their closest friends. (But we've known social trust has been declining for a long time, and I rather assumed it formed a age-based demographic wedge, like linguistic change or nearly any other behavioral change.)

One odd bit of research looked at housing prices and commuting times/costs in and near London. I guess this must have been in the '80s, maybe early '90s. It found that housing + commuting was pretty much a constant. The farther from the City, the cheaper the housing but the more expensive the commute (putting in some value for time), and the decrease in one balanced the increase in the other.

... owned by slumlords willing to exploit them.

The problem is not that people refuse to share homes and apartments.

It's a common arrangement in many places for entire families to live in one room, even for unrelated working people to share individual rooms. You see a lot of that in California's Silicon Valley; young unmarried engineers and techs living college dorm room style, six or more of them in a three bedroom house.

I live in a neighborhood where multi-generational families are becoming common. All the adults in the house work full time but the younger people can't afford their own apartments, or daycare for their children, so they move in with parents or grandparents. It causes parking problems in the street when every family has four or five cars and the garage is being used as an informal family room or workshop because the home's actual family room has become a bedroom. It also seems increasingly common to have cousins, nephews, nieces, and elderly aunts and uncles contributing to the mortgage or rent.

My own kids didn't bounce back home after they'd graduated from college but they didn't return to our city either. The rents here are absurdly high but wages haven't risen in proportion.

It's very sad. I know they don't want to live that way. The issue I have with them parking on neighborhood streets is that some of them dump their waste into the bushes. It's really bad. Believe me.

We need our middle-class back.
I hope we can vote in a Congress, Senate and President who can put us back together.
I believe we're ready now.

and sort of not but the "not" is the fault of the conservatives who live and vote there.

I was there in June and went to the beach with my sister who lives in San Diego. All the dog beaches and free parking lots along the jetties were packed with RVs and cars, homeless gatherings. At the time I had just gone indoors after being homeless myself so I was curious about it, I lived in a vehicle too and was hard pressed to find a safe place to park at night. So I am glad that they are going to see relief from tickets at lest. I used to drive semis down there, they don't have truck stops, in a place with a population that large. Those are often places to park overnight if you don't go there every night.

The negative is that many will choose to park in places that aren't appropriate and it could get even more crowded in residential areas and that could get ugly. appearances are everything there. Those who don't have vehicles can often be found along the river in the willows, in the islands at on/off ramps along the freeways - seriously, all along the edges of Balboa Park. Homelessness in San Diego has increased exponentially and getting worse thanks to their politics. This ugly part might eventually force them to do something more humane, but it will have to impact them in an unacceptable way to make them decide to go there.