Unfurnished ($950&#x2F;mo) is still more than I pay for a ~2400 sqft house with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, with garage, back patio and yard.<p>The back patio has my own personal grill on it.  It&#x27;s getting rusty now, but it&#x27;s about 8 years old, still usable, and only cost me $45 and some assembly time.  My communal lounge rarely has more than 4 people in it, and none of them are creepy, annoying, stinky, or crazy.<p>My home is, however, a 67 hour walk from the nearest metro train station.  So they got me on that one.<p>One of the solutions to a dearth of housing in the major cities is to convince more people to live somewhere else (lower local demand).  But that requires employers to have their workplaces somewhere else.  If you are starting a new business, please try to be aware that you will end up paying a large fraction of the combined cost of all your employees&#x27; housing, in the form of higher pay expectations.  That is a cost that you can easily cut without sacrificing much, just by setting up shop in places with cheaper housing.  Alternatively, convince the expensive cities to levy a tax on businesses based upon the amounts their employees pay for their housing and commuting costs, to make that relationship more obvious.<p>Avoid San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, New York City, Seattle, Riverside, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Denver, and Portland.<p>Consider Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis, Cincinnati, Birmingham, St. Louis, Columbus, and Louisville.  If you absolutely <i>must</i> have a <i>world-class</i> city, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Phoenix are all reasonably priced candidates.<p>But let&#x27;s not all pick the same city, or we just end up with the same problem in a different place.