This is, for those unfamiliar with the situation there, not actually an exaggeration, but literally what one of my friends was doing. It had been converted to a "cottage" and it was one room with a bathroom in the corner. FWIW it was pretty cute, but it was about $2k a month and had no dedicated parking. Climate control was "it gets hot in the sun, open the windows to cool it down" plus a space heater she had. The people living there bought the house decades ago and paid less on the mortgage for the entire property than what they rented out the cottage for.
How do we fix this?