I pay $800 rent in downtown Toronto, and my monthly expenses are about $1,100 total. 2 Bedroom would probably make it a bit harder and pop that up to about $1,500 total. Takehome is roughly 4x that, so 25% of pay goes to expenses.

My friend swears up and down that he can't find a place less than $1,400 to rent in Thunder Bay.

When I was living in a student town my expenses were roughly $600 a month total, shared accommodations and all that are pretty cheap, plus a lot of food prep.

There's obviously a pretty big gap in what a lot of people consider "living cheap", I'd have to say. Especially if you think that $1800 is the cheapest rent in a rural town.

Maybe that needs an asterisk - Cheapest rent you're willing to pay for a very specific set of conditions?

When I think Rural towns, I think of actual rural towns like Timiskaming, Palmquist or even Timmins, where you can straight up buy a house for $50k.