square footage could go down.

Could it though? Don’t know if you noticed but the rental market is completely fucked in NA. For most people this would mean renting a room instead of an apartment, which doesn’t work well if you for example, are a family of 4.

find a different job closer

There are no guarantees for this because jobs of people’s industries which pay them the money they need to support themselves and their families are not geographically distributed evenly. If you have years of tenure at your workplace as well, it is a big fucking risk to change jobs unless you have a really, really, good reason to do so as well.

Point is, you might have these option but it doesn’t mean everyone does. People’s lives and options are not so black and white as you seem to think.