A Boring Dystopia

2600 SQ ft house, detached 30*60 garage with a couple shop rooms and loft storage, normal town size corner lot with 150 yards of ponderosa pines out the back door between us and the lake. House was built in 1915, but it's level, has drywall, Romex, mostly pex, vinyl siding (it's not fucked up in any way at all, and is way more solid than a typical suburb house).

Mortgage, warranty, insurance, and taxes total out to less than $1k a month (bought it just prior to pandemic, so I beat the bubble, but I'm not talking about some shit I financed in the 90's or something, it's a 4 year old loan...).

Catch is, it's 63 miles one way to the closest Walmart (and most of the nearest jobs...), best internet plan available is 80mb (and I use some of that for a femtocell, because cell phones are iffy out here), and the the entire county is a whopping 3k people. The place is dying, and when a business goes under, it's generally for good (and COVID fucked most of them). Can't have no $500 craigslist hoopty out here, and your nice car ain't gonna stay that way forever. Lots of mileage if you're running 100mi to get to work and back...

Fast food in town is paying $16/hr though, so it's pretty damned easy to make ends meet :) Get on Zillow and look in the big ass open rural areas if you're willing to give up easy access to Starbucks and McDonald's, and you'll find these sorts of places. They aren't uncommon at all, they just aren't something people are generally amenable to, and you don't wanna show up in such a place homeless unless you wanna do the whole Rambo deal... Can't say I agree with that sort of intolerance, but I'd be lying if I said you'd find anything but.