Housing is a huge cost for most of us. And housing costs always seem to go up so finding some way to secure cheap housing needs to be a priority for anyone wanting to go down the PovertyFIRE path. Other than moving to South East Asia or Central America where you can rent for super cheap, here are a few ideas:

I think the most common way, even if it seems un-glorious, is to get a mortgage on a reasonably priced house and just work to pay it off. At the end of the mortgage, you then own the house outright and only have to pay property taxes and upkeep. The downfalls with this approach is that it can take a very long time to pay off the mortgage and, after you do, there is no guarantee that property taxes won't continue to rise to the point that it breaks your retirement budget. Some will speed up this process by renting out rooms or getting a duplex/triplex and living in one unit while renting out the others (often refereed to as House Hacking). I know a few people who have been able to manage to get their entire mortgage payment covered by their roommates and essentially have free housing. The can present its own set of challenges, but might be a good option for you.

The next option is to go down the route of buying cheap land and building a home. This can be with /r/TinyHouses or /r/Yurts. And some will want to do the whole /r/OffGrid thing or maybe go down the /r/Homesteading route (and maybe both!). The downfall here is that is can be hard to find cheap land that is not inhospitable to live on and/or isn't so far outside of civilization that you end up feeling like a hermit. But if you keep your eyes open, there are occasionally good parcels of land to do this from. And before you do this, call around to the county planning and permit offices to make sure that they don't have any rules that would prevent you doing anything. This is the route I going down and I was able to find a county near the city I am in that will allow offgrid living and the permitting and planning process is not overly burdensome.

The last option that I think will be common is the /r/VanDwellers or boat /r/liveaboard/ routes. I think living the nomadic life in a van or RV is probably the most accessible for most people. You can pick up a decent van for a few thousand. the CheapRVLiving YouTube channel has great videos on how to convert them for very little money. But once you that done, your housing expenses are very little. You can stealth park in neighborhoods around town or head off into National Forests or Bureau of Land Management land where dispersed camping is allowed and live rent/mortgage free.

What other ways are there to get super cheap place to live? Or are you doing any of the above? What is working for you?