When No Home is Affordable, Where Do You Live?

It’s a common story: Candace McNatt of Durango, in southern Colorado, kept losing bidding wars to buy a house. She finally settled on a tiny home of just 350 square feet.

McNatt works as an operating room nurse and is a single mother of two teenagers, one about to go to college. Though she landed on the home ownership ladder at one of its lower rungs, she’s relieved. “But this is not how I saw myself approaching the age of 40,” she muses.

The rent on her home lot is $650; her mortgage just $604. Combined, that’s about half of what she had been paying to rent an apartment in Durang...