In NY / LI in an industrial park so anything cheaper than about around 2k is a bedroom with no kitchen, no w/d, or some kind of chop shop tenement housing with 20 bedrooms packed into a normal two story house. Anything listed as cheaper, especially on sites like Craigslist is just scammers who want your SSN and illegally high "application fees" before you even see the place, or they're excluding some deal breaker details (e.g. nowhere to do laundry, no kitchen, roommates, what utilities are included, etc).

I could live around an hour by car away but then I'd also need a car + insurance etc. Funnily enough the lack of a car doesn't really affect my options because of how large of a black hole in cheap housing there is out here. It wouldv also negate the cost savings. The streets are not walkable or bikable - it's all 4+ lane highways, so certain places aren't an option. Currently I take a train+bus+walk but I'm at the whims of those underfunded systems, which have proven unreliable.