I moved to Pittsburgh 6 months ago for medical reasons(shorter kidney transplant list than New York, in fact I already got the call just recently) and the housing is cheap here. Some locals consider my rent expensive($1380, i've seen standard not shitty paprtment starting at $850) but you can't get ANYTHING besides a bedroom or a REALLY fucked up apartment the size of my current walk in closet back home for that price. Not even on long island either. I'm in a newly built three year old complex, 1100 square foot luxury apartment and the grounds have a lovely bbq area, huge pool and fitness center.
The Housing here is also quite affordable, but I would just never live here permanently. Once I get my kidney and heal up enough i am on thew first plane back to NY. I can never get use to life here. It's too slow and Pittsuburgh while having a few nice features is clearly the shell of an old industry mining town built upon an enterprise that is now outsourced to china. Massive urban decay, half the houses and buildings here look like they were bult in 1850 and never maintained, whole chunks of every district are abandoned, the food sucks mostly, the poor litter the streets in many areas and there is nothing to do here.
It's kind of the gloomiest parts of NY, with a tenth of the population and none of the positive aspects. And somehow, depsite the massively cheaper car insurance rates, the drivers here are awful. As if they learned to drive on a tractor at a farm and have driven 90% of their life up till now on a dirt road in smallville(lol) and literally moved to a city two days ago. Terible. there seems to be a moderate influx of people from rural areas in surrounding states and they seem to like it.
Even if I were to settle down and have a fmaily, I wouldn't live here.
It's not the end of the world, but we can see it from here.