In Star Trek Picard we see Raffi living at rock bottom for a while. She has no job after her discharge from Starfleet, and is clearly not doing as well. She describes her life as humiliation and rage.
And yet by modern standards she has a home, food, and power. Her drug usage isn’t condoned but she’s left largely alone to do it. By modern 21st century standards its a very soft landing.
Does it get worse than this? What is the worst possible economic outcome someone living on 24th Century Earth is likely to face.
The events of DS9: Past Tense imply that things aren’t as bad as sanctuary districts and mass homelessness, but there’s a lot of range between that and where Raffi landed. So what evidence do we have about how bad it can get?
We don’t see any worse then Raffi on Earth or most of the ‘modern’ Federation. Raffi chose to live that way. I guess all the people that choose to live in “small” deluxe apartments might be “less” then Raffi’s trailer.
A lot of space stations, like Jupiter Station, many space Starbases, and nearly all Starships don’t have that much ‘space’. So if you choose to live on one, you just get small luxury quarters. People like Mr.Mot the Barber or the servers in Ten Forward on the Enterprise-D chose to live there
A lot of the Colony worlds choose a Simple Life, where they do nearly everything the old fashioned way…but even then they still have all the 24th comforts, they just choose not to do it. And I’m sure that growing some food is “fun”, but that they still call out to the replcator for food. And sure you can ‘make’ charcoal…or you can just say 'a five pound bag of charcoal".