I hope your July 4th was better than mine.
My rent was raised by $20. I now pay $422 a month for a room.
Now doesn’t that just suck. 
Have you investigated boarding houses? My mother rented-out rooms for years, and she even put in a seperate phone line for the boarders. The rent was surprisingly low, especially considering that her places were only 7 minutes walk from a major college campus. That kind of thing may be your best bet.
Time to check into that SRO Housing situation more aggressively. 10 years ago, when I was broke and the recession was hitting LA severely, I lived in a brand new SRO building on Grand, it was great. It had just been rennovated, it used to be a dormitory for the hospital just across the street, and it was a lot nicer than some of the apartments I’d rented in LA over the years. I only paid $200/mo, I can’t imagine they’d have doubled the rent over the last 10 years.