It's also worse in Norway, and not just that but even remote places in Norway. It's going to be everywhere, isn't it? Where exactly is housing cheap now?
I'm really struggling to do that, because trading up in areas is difficult, I'm looking at a doubling of housing costs (plus all the other costs of moving) in exchange for ~20-30% more pay in a more affluent area. There are a lot of people like me, trapped in crappy areas with low housing costs and unable to trade up despite being full-time employed. I feel like I just exist here, weekends are my escape but I need to escape forever.
Some dead or dying places are so cheap that you can not even get loans to fix properties. Which itself is an different issue.
Some reasonably growing areas have quite affordable old housing.
I have family in Michigan. I checked home prices and you can still buy a house (not a condo), in a nice town with very good schools for $200,000. With property tax, insurance and mortgage your total home expense would be ~$1,000/month, even at today's interest rates.
Plenty of jobs that pay $60,000 there, that's $7,000 per month take home if you're married with two wages earners, leaving $6,000 left over each month, or $60,000 per year.
You will often have weather to deal with.
And if you’re young and willing, buying a fixer upper is still a workable strategy - and youtube makes this actually much more workable than even 20 years ago. Sweat equity works wonders.
Part of the trick is that lots of jobs are not actually IN the city - they will be to one side, so live on the side that your job is.
This is why a few cities, like Pittsburg, have seen a resurgence -- cheap housing and the benefits of an actual city.