If you're one of the people who keeps complaining about how you can't afford a home, maybe you'd prefer it to renting for the rest of your life.

And, if you consider everywhere that you can remote work from to be "a terrible location", then I suspect your definition needs adjusted...

There's a vast amount of non-terrible space that used to be uninhabitable due to zero economic activity

This comment only makes sense if you are assuming a significant majority of these places are "terrible", which is baffling to me, unless you are silently using your personal preferences to define "terrible" in the context of the larger conversation.

To save more money and retire early?

Pay off debt?