> Unfortunately, right now your only choices in the developed world are: an extremely fancy luxurious living arrangement (most condos, apartments, houses, etc)

> Unfortunately, right now your only choices in the developed world are: an extremely fancy luxurious living arrangement (most condos, apartments, houses, etc) far beyond your means or an illegal tent under the highway. In the city where the author is based, there's plenty of derision of "luxury" places, but it's just Nimby code for "don't build anything, I want to keep renting my basement at $2k/m". Actual luxury places are the ones they live in, paid for presumably by borrowing against their land value. Even at $1.4m, new builds have a veneer of what amounts to AirBnBification, as far as I've seen from the few I've actually visited. They're expensive and poor quality with relatively little space, fake wood finishes, vinyl flooring like anything else, and a standard package of appliances The way I've been framing this is that it costs basically $2m CAD in this city to paint your house, if you wanted to be able to. You can buy something below that, but you don't have the same amount of agency over it that you would with a detached house. Point is though that I find it's rare for any rented place or condo to be fancy by any stretch, it's all pretty ordinary stuff you'd expect but dressed up like it's expensive. The kitchen is still in the living room and has 4 sq ft of space to move around in, the cupboards are usually still particleboard, where there might have been a closet 20 yrs ago there's now machinery or venting, and the doorknobs are crunchy.