Having a phone or laptop but living in a car or tent isn’t better than having an actual residence. People in the US can become homeless (lose job, run out of savings) and when they do, they will try to hang onto laptops and phones, since they are portable, valuable and very useful (looking for jobs, housing, social services, etc. ). You can get a cheap pay as you go phone for like $30 and hang onto it for years. Here in Seattle you can get work as a day laborer making around $16 an hour, so a cheap phone is attainable for anyone well enough to show up in the morning and dig ditches for a day. Meanwhile, you’d have a hard time finding even the crappiest little studio apartment with a shared kitchen for less than $1000 per month. And you usually have to have 3 months of rent to move in.