There are stranger things in heaven and earth, Lex, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 
There are people who work two jobs in those places....and they barely keep up with mortgage payments as it is. that's assuming they can even find the first job, let alone the second.
Have you ever been to eastern Kentucky? West Virginia? Rural Appalachia in general? How about the more depressed rural parts of the rust belt?
I've been to Kentucky and West Virginia as well as Watts in Los Angeles and the Projects in New York. I started my working life picking fruit, strawberries, cucumbers, and swamping melons with migrant farm workers. Many of my friends and their families lived in 15 ft travel trailers, often with 5 or 6 children. We all played in the dirt courtyard of the trailer park. I lived in a dilapidated old house that was moved to a dirt lot when they built a freeway through our town. It had been abandoned for 5 years when we purchased it, and it was the only house we could afford. Nothing in it was straight. The door frames were crooked and the doors wouldn't open or close. Every window (dozens of panes of glass) had been broken. The light fixtures had been torn out. There were large holes in the walls and all the plumbing leaked. We flushed the toilet by pouring a bucket of water in bowl because the tank on the toilet had been broken and we didn't have the money to replace it. It is not how you grow up, it is how you think and the choices you make throughout your life that determine how you end.
The reason your house is paid off is because you bought it before Cali real estate shot up. You pay probably 1/10 the property taxes that many of your neighbors do, and THAT'S why you own the same house since 1976....because of prop 13.
Yes, today I'm able to take advantage of prop 13, but prop 13 made no difference when I purchased the property as I had to pay taxes on the current purchase price and this is true today. I'm always amused when people think that it was easier to purchase a house years ago than it is now. Just not true. I paid $50K for my house in 1976. At that time I earned 10K a year - about 800/month. My interest rate was 9.25% and my payment and property taxes were $421 a month - over half my income. Also notice that the purchase price of my house was 5 times my income.
Today my house will sell for $320K. My neighbor across the street just sold hers for this amount and we have essentially the same tract house. The same job that paid me $10K/year in 1976 is now paying $85K/year or $7k/month base salary (yes the exact same job exists and they are hiring). The cost of the house today is only 3.75 times salary. Interest rates are less than 4% rather than over 9% Today's payment including current property taxes is $1,379/mo which is only 20% of today's equivalent monthly pay. To be in the same financial position that I was when I purchased my house in 1976, where more than half my paycheck went to the house, you'd have to be making less than $15/hr. Purchasing the same house and paying today's property taxes while earning $15 or more an hour today, and you are in better financial shape than I was in 1976.
Also, the cost of living now is a lot higher than it was back in the 80s, and salaries have NOT kept up with inflation.
I know you don't understand that, because you started out back in the early 80s, but it's very true. Feel free to research it, or I can provide cites. I respect that you worked hard and saved, but that's not even enough these days, particularly in more economically-depressed places.
You don't need to provide citations as I'm living through this mess, but the truth is that what you believe is true today has also been true for every generation. Every generation believes that the previous generation had it easier. What you call poor today is not even close to the kind of poor I grew up with. I still have a darning egg and needles for repairing clothes when I was growing up. Mom made most of our clothes and taught all us kids to sew and patch our own clothes. I was still making my own shirts - even T-shirts and boxers - and darning the holes in my socks until I was in my late 20's because I wasn't willing to spend the money on commercially made clothes, which at the time were much more expensive than what I could make them for. That is not true today.
You believe that the cost of living today is much higher than it was when I was during most of my generation and that it is impossible to do what I did. Not true. It is how I think, the choices I made, and what I was willing to do without that gave me what I have today.
Let me give you an example of a choice that I made that I doubt that you would make. I can say this because over 15,000 people were offered the exact same thing I was and only 3 of us took up the offer.
The offer was made in 1980 to purchase $50,000 worth of a utility stock for 1/2 price or $25,000. What a deal. You will make an instant $25,000 profit if you accept this offer. Sounds great until you find out the conditions.
Condition 1- you must pay $12,500 or half of the purchase price up front. It doesn't matter where you get the money. You can borrow it, take it out of savings, whatever, you just have to pay $12,500 to get in. Remember this is $12,500 in 1980 - not today's dollars.
Condition 2- you must have the remaining $12,500 deducted from your monthly paycheck. This will reduce your takehome pay by $1,040 per month for 1 full year. The money you pay into this investment is not tax deductible so the full $1040 per month is lost to you for the full year. You'll have to live on whatever is left in your paycheck. Of course you can supplement with money from savings if you have it or take on a second job to cover the shortage for the year. It is up to you. In my case I was left with the equivalent of just under the 1980 minimum wage as my takehome during the year. This just paid the mortgage, utilities, and food. My wife took a job cleaning tables during the lunch rush at a hamburger stand to make ends meet. She couldn't work full time because we couldn't afford a baby sitter for the kids so she had to be home when they weren't in school.
Condition 3- you can't sell the stock or borrow against the value of the stock or get any of the money whatsoever from this deal for a minimum of 25 years.
Condition 4- this is just common stock but from a good Utility. There is no guarantee that the stock will go up in value. If it stays the same at least you make $25K but that is only 1K per year gain over the 25 year duration of this investment and you would make far more in a common bank CD. The stock could easily go down to where you lose money, or it could go up and you'll make a good return. The point is, you assume all risk and your hands are tied for 25 years.
Would you join me and my two other friends and take the offer?
Again remember that all the sums above are in 1980 dollars. If you want to judge this against the $85/K salary I said my job at that time pays today you must also increase everything else by 5 or 6 times. In other words, today the initial payment would be between $60,000 and $72,000, and the monthly deduction from your check would be between $5,000 and $6,000 per month leaving you between $1,000 and $2,000 per month to live on.
If I were 29 years old today, would I take this deal if it were offered today and have to live off of $1,000 to $2000 per month ($6-$12/hr) in today's dollars for the next year, sacrificing cell phones, cable TV, grass-fed beef, riding a bicycle and not owning a car, and all the rest? The answer for me is an unqualified yes - in a heartbeat.
