I am afraid Professor Gunning (a fine product of University of Delaware, Economics, 1965 and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & SU, Economics, 1974) is right. True, his argument is not very imaginative. He might have investigated the reasons behind the land use policies that cause housing shortages, such as irrational preference for single dwelling units that preclude more efficient land utilization, or government failure to deliver efficient public transportation (the journey from Sand Francisco to San Jose is a journey in time - by a 2nd World War era diesel locomotive) to conncet SV to localities South of SF Bay area).
But it summarizes the essence of economic thinking and rat-choice mentality - that focuses on the individuals' reaction to the existing (and given) opportunity structure. Staying in a location where $50k a year cannot buy a roof over one's head is a choice indeed, since having $50k at one's disposal opens up some other options.
It also exposes the social-engineering nature of rat-choice economics - which is the science of desirbale individual responses to the opportunity structure handed out as a given i.e beyond questioning - or "herrenwissenchaft" - master race science in Horkheimer's terminology. This is epitomized in the follwing Gunning remark "And one must stand ready to adjust." Indeed, one must not attempt to change the structural conditions, but stand ready to adjust to them. (btw, this is what makes Marx a bad economist, as deLong had argued - he called for changing the world, not merely explaining it).
This is the science that would also argue that the Jews chose to be gassed. Virulent nazi anti-semitism and the harsh reality of life in a concentration camp made living less desirable for them, so they preferred gas chambers instead. The Nazi "final soulution" policies were rational as well - given food shortages created by war, a large segment of the population would starve to death anyway, so it was more efficient to dispose them off in a more orderly manner by a careful selection and maximizing the utlity of their labor power and bodies as experimental subjects and the source of raw materials (gold, fat, etc.). Needless to say that the war itself was rational as well, it replaced backward "Polnische wirtschaft" with a more effcient economic order.
wojtek