I find the idea attractive without any money savings. I find it very odd it's much easier to find a large crappy apartment than a small well-maintained one; I feel like it should be possible to get an apartment at any point in the 2d space of (quality, size) with the cost being some function of that, in reality the apartment seems to only be available around some tight distribution around a line in that space.
Moving into a bad neighborhood seems awful to me; for me, living in a 100 sq ft apartment would be only better than living in a 1000 sq ft one. I'm stuck living in an apartment with 2 roommates, a totally unused dining room and a very lightly used and unnecessary living room because there's no reasonable alternatives.
I'm glad my new/old mid-sized (250k inhabitants) town's only college is far from the city center (and therefor its students don't want to live in the center) & that hip young people in general have no interest in living here (mostly families, the young & hip go to the big city).
Leaves a lot of the old (and therefor small) apartments in the old (and therefor central) part of town available for rent at a semi-decent rate.
Moving into a bad neighborhood seems awful to me; for me, living in a 100 sq ft apartment would be only better than living in a 1000 sq ft one. I'm stuck living in an apartment with 2 roommates, a totally unused dining room and a very lightly used and unnecessary living room because there's no reasonable alternatives.