[vtail]

For argument’s sake, I just visited craigslist rental section for the city of Olympia, a WA state capital which is about 1 hr drive from Seattle. You can totally find a decent looking 1bedroom for $600-700, and I’m pretty sure that studios and/or a room in a shared house will be considerably less.

[stephengillie]

Olympia is only an hour drive from Seattle during the middle of the night, or sometimes on weekends. Most of the time, it's at least a 2 hour drive, and can be a 4 hour drive in the right conditions - heavy rain, collisions on I-5, construction reducing lanes, Ft Lewis traffic, and Capitol traffic. That length of trip greatly increases the number of probable delays encountered. It also increases the probability of being involved in one, especially in those "right" conditions.

[loeg]

Olympia's a smaller city, but still a city. Exurbs like Snoqualmie or North Bend are likely to be even more inexpensive (edit: although, less likely to have apartments — your cheap option is the less desirable trailer park). Or Bremerton / Peninsula.

To the north there's Everett and that area.

Lots of options within 1hr of Seattle, if you don't have to commute it regularly.

[InclinedPlane]

Did you actually look through those rental listings? A lot of them are super vague, some are probably scams, some list their rates per week not per month. Show me one with full details and maybe I'll believe it. Also, it says something that it's non-trivial to hunt down rental listings in that price range, not everyone has the tools or the ability to scour through listings to find the few legit ones. Also, show me a listing where moving in doesn't cost near $1k for the first month.

[rand0oman]

Why does someone have to have a full apartment by themselves?

There are many options for rooms that are <$500 a month within half an hour of Seattle:

https://seattle.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=500

[InclinedPlane]

I already replied to this, clearly you haven't actually looked at these listings.