You can buy a house for literally $1 in several neighborhoods in Detroit right now. Perfectly livable houses are available for the cost of a few MacBook Pros in other depressed cities and towns.
I think the issue is really that the places you want to live are also the places lots of other people want to live--not that the absolute floor on housing costs has risen so far.
In ancient history the people who lived 10 to a house also rarely owned the house or land where they lived. Either they lived in a society with little organized sense of individual property rights (really ancient history), or they were sharecropper tenants on some lord's land. Not so different from young people in a popular metro area today, except that back then there was almost no possibility of ever changing their lot in life.
As with most things, the one dollar Detroit houses are far more complex than that. For example, typically you will pay taxes on the appraised value rather than the one dollar. You're also buying into a neighborhood with little in the way of city services, although the city is working on that.
I think the issue is really that the places you want to live are also the places lots of other people want to live--not that the absolute floor on housing costs has risen so far.
In ancient history the people who lived 10 to a house also rarely owned the house or land where they lived. Either they lived in a society with little organized sense of individual property rights (really ancient history), or they were sharecropper tenants on some lord's land. Not so different from young people in a popular metro area today, except that back then there was almost no possibility of ever changing their lot in life.