There seems to be a pretty sharp lower bound on how cheap a living situation (e.g. rent on an apartment) can be in the parts of the United States I'm familiar with. I would have thought that there would be demand for cheap-but-bad housing on the part of people with low income. Here are some hypotheses I've come up with for explaining this, and I'd appreciate anyone who has relevant knowledge commenting if I'm on track:
The cost of complying with health and safety regulations makes it too expensive to price rent below a certain amount even at the worst the rental situation is legally allowed to be.
There's also zoning and other issues, and subtler ones like licensing of construction trades, etc. But this seems to be a big part of the story. From last year http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/how-the-trailer-park-could-save-us-all-55137/
...By any name, they are the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the country. There are seven million manufa
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