The voluntary simplicity lifestyle is an effort to have both though. People are building portable houses based on trailers that are 300 square feet or less so they can travel and have low overhead. Of course housing is just part of the cost of living. In the midwest you can get an apartment with utilities for $300/month if you don’t mind a roommate. You still have to pay for food, medical care, transportation, luxury items, etc. Another issue is where do you set up, a lot of areas have minimum housing sizes which make tiny portable houses hard to set up as permanent domiciles. Living in a camper sounds nice, but where do you park it to get a steady supply of electricity and water (as well as how do you handle the winter weather since many campers are 3 season items)? Trailer campers cost 10k and do not pay property taxes, so naturally states and cities are opposed to people living in them as permanent shelters as they need the tax revenue. But seeing how income inequality keeps getting worse and housing (as well as health care) is one of the first things people are going to have to change their living standards about, these are questions that need to be answered sooner or later.
With the economy the way it is, it is hard to leave a job once you find one. Supposedly one of the reasons the hippy culture took off in the 60s was that was the first generation who had easy access to high paying jobs. Because of that people could drop out of society for a few years and engage in self discovery. If they got bored, the factory was always hiring. Before that period most jobs either didn’t pay enough or were hard to find. We are moving back to that situation, and it can be hard to give up a semi-good job when someone finds one after years of searching and building their resume.
